


The Strangled Cry of Space

by MossyBallerina



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alchera, Angst, Canon Compliant, Desire, Earthborn (Mass Effect), Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Heavy on the angst, Horizon (Mass Effect), Hurt/Comfort, Kaidan is an idiot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reconciliation, Shenko - Freeform, Shepard/Liara friendship, Slow Burn, The Reaper War, Trust Issues, War, War Hero (Mass Effect), but also (eventually) heavy on the fluff, but an idiot who will eventually learn he's an idiot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-01-03 06:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21175124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MossyBallerina/pseuds/MossyBallerina
Summary: Two years after intially falling in love on the Normandy, Shepard and Kaidan are thrown together once again when the Reapers attack Earth. They both still care for each other, but between there's hurt and trust issues on both sides as Shepard tries to come to terms with her own death and resurrection at the hands of Cerberus, and Kaidan tries to figure out if she's still the woman he loved.Set during ME3, this fic explores Kaidan and Shepard's relationship as they slowly heal their relationship and learn to fall in love again, all while saving the galaxy.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Much as I love Kaidan, I've always felt like his romance in ME3 is a bit lackluster. There were little glimpses of potential, such as the emotional he sends after Horizon in ME2, but I want MORE. And, seeing as this is me we're talking about, when I say "more," I mean more angst because I need things to hurt before the fluff.
> 
> Hence, this fic was born! Also, shout out to the ever-lovely h34rt1lly for being such a fabulous beta.

Alchera is cold.

That’s the first thing that registers in Lily Shepard’s mind when she steps off the shuttle and onto the planet’s surface. It’s the kind of cold that somehow passes through her hardsuit;, the kind of cold that seeps into her bones, and she can’t help but shiver.

The second thing to register is the eerie quiet. There’s the wind, the slight crunch of snow under her boots when she first stepped off the Normandy and… that’s it. Shuddering, she presses on, trying not to think too much about what this planet means.

It isn’t until she finds the first dog tag that the emotions hit her. The metal glistens in the snow, staring up at her, stark and unfeeling and _cold_. Why is everything so cold?

When the first piece of wreckage from the Normandy SR-1 comes into sight, she inhales sharply, trying to fight back tears. The Normandy had been her first real command, but more than that, it had been her _home_. And now it was gone.

Good people had died here. Too many names and faces, lost forever, and it makes her heart ache to think about it. They deserved better.

(She tries not to think about the fact that she, too, died here, but when she stumbles across her old N7 helmet, cracked and dented, it’s impossible to forget. Is she even real anymore? Is _this_ real? Or did she stay dead, out in that endless sea of stars, and this is all some sort of purgatory-esque nightmare?)

She forces herself to go through the motions and collect the rest of the dog tags. She refuses to let the brave, loyal soldiers under her command be forgotten. Their families deserved peace, and they deserved recognition for being the best damn crew she’d ever had the privilege of working with.

It’s not until she places the monument that a strangled cry escapes her defenses, clawing its way out of her throat. Everything is too real and also too dead and why is she so _cold_? Maybe going alone wasn’t a good idea, but at least she doesn’t have to let anyone see her right now. Scared. Vulnerable. _Weak_.

There was only one person she ever trusted to see that side of her, but his words on Horizon made it quite clear that he no longer wanted anything to do with her, that he didn’t trust her. Could she blame him? Some days she didn’t trust herself. She didn’t trust herself to be real.

Because she _remembers_, she remembers what it was like to die, and how was anyone supposed to come back from that? She remembers choking on stardust, she remembers the deep cold of space—the kind of cold that lingers and permeates every cell of your being. The kind of cold that’s inescapable.

The kind of cold that comes with death.

Because she was dead, and now she’s not, and some days she wonders _ how long_. How long until this illusion shatters, how long until _ she _ shatters? Some days she doesn’t trust her feet to not shatter as she swings them over her bed in the morning and places them on the cold, hard ground.

Some days it is only the knowledge that the galaxy is relying on her that allows her to get up, to pull her hair back and put on her armor—to become _ Commander Shepard_, Savior of the Citadel, and not just _ Liliana Grace Shepard_, dead woman walking.

* * *

Her vision has started to go hazy by the time Joker swings the Normandy by to pick her up. He opens his mouth at the sight of her, blank-eyed and emotionless, but closes it again, unsure of what to say—or perhaps knowing better than to engage Commander Shepard when she’s in one of her moods.

“I’ll be in my quarters,” she manages to force out through frozen lips. Corpse-like. Again, there’s that niggling thought she can’t get over. Is she real? Or is she still dead?

“You know how to reach me if something comes up,” she continues, tripping over the words, her tongue feeling like lead in her mouth. No, not lead—a block of ice.

“Roger that, Commander,” Joker says. He pauses. “Are you—?”

“I’m fine.” She cuts him off before he can finish. “I have reports to fill out.”

She stumbles her way to the elevator, and into her quarters, stripping off her armor the moment the door closes. She can’t stop shivering and now her teeth are chattering, and she trips and fumbles her way into the shower.

Why is she so cold?

She turns the shower on as hot as it will go, and the scalding spray turns her pale skin bright red, but she can’t feel it. She can’t feel anything. Why can’t she feel? Maybe the real Commander Shepard is back there on Alchera, buried in the ice. Or maybe the real Commander Shepard is still floating out there in the vastness of space, drowned in the light of the stars.

Maybe Kaidan’s harsh words on Horizon were true, maybe she is a fake, a clone. A ghost. That’s what he’d called her, wasn’t it? For some reason, that is what sticks with her, more than his distrust, more than his hurtful words, more than him calling her a traitor.

Because if she is a ghost, then none of this is real, right? If she’s a ghost, then Kaidan can’t hate her. If she’s a ghost, she doesn’t have to save the galaxy from impossible odds. _ Again_. If she’s a ghost, she can’t be a traitor.

Because she worries sometimes. She worries about trusting Cerberus, about trusting the Illusive Man. She _ doesn’t _ trust them, but what choice does she have? She’s a ghost, and none of this matters because none of this is real and Kaidan can move on with that doctor on the Citadel he mentioned, and the thought _ hurts _ but he deserves better than a ghost.

He deserves better than the shell she’s become, the empty husk that Cerberus brought back; because this isn’t _ real _ and it isn’t _ right _ and it isn’t _ her _ and she still can’t warm up. Even though she’s been standing under the scalding spray for minutes now.

She turns the water off and wraps herself in her bathrobe, droplets from her long blonde hair dripping down her back. She only makes it a few steps before she collapses, her breath coming in gasps, sobs catching in her throat as she clings to the frame of her bed for support.

She died back there. _ Died_. Dead. Deceased. And all the other synonyms she can’t think of. There is no ‘almost’ this time, no coming back from the brink just in time. She’s faced death countless times—on Earth as a child, when she fell into the wrong crowd; during the Skyllian Blitz, when she held off the Batarians until reinforcements could arrive; fighting Saren at the battle of the Citadel.

And countless more insignificant moments, countless times when a mission had gone awry, when something unexpected had happened, when reports had been wrong, and the danger was greater than anticipated. But there was always that _ almost_. There was always laughter born out of relief and _ “Fuck, that was a close one," _and toasts to fallen friends who didn’t make it.

But this time, it had been her. It should be her friends toasting her, it _ had been _ her friends toasting her, and yet she’s still here. 

Why is she still here?

She cries and cries and cries until she can’t cry anymore, until she can’t tell if she’s shaking because of tears or because of that unending cold, until she’s numb and exhausted.

* * *

In her head, she writes a thousand letters to him.

In them, she curses him out, she begs him for forgiveness, she tells him she hasn’t changed, she apologizes for who she’s become. Contradictions, but all true, nonetheless. She is both legend and ghost, hero and traitor, broken but somehow still whole.

Words from his email run through her brain on a loop. 

_ “I guess I really don’t know who either of us is anymore.” _

_ “A lot has changed in the last two years and I can’t just put that aside.” _

_ “When things settle down a little… maybe…” _

And, worst of all, _ “Just take care_.”

She wants to cling on to hope, hope that maybe he doesn’t hate her, that maybe they still have a future. Hope that maybe she’s still real. But if she can’t even trust herself to be real, how can she expect him to trust her on that? He can’t love a ghost. He can’t love what doesn’t exist.

In her head, she has a thousand conversations with him, a thousand arguments, a thousand reconciliations. She worries that maybe she’s going crazy, but ghosts can’t go crazy, can they?

_ “Dear Kaidan,” _ she thinks, as if her thoughts can somehow reach him. _ “I’m sorry that I’ve become a ghost. I’m sorry that I’m no longer real. I, too, don’t know who I am anymore, because who I was and who I am are not the same and I don’t know how to reconcile that. I am made entirely of broken parts and pieces that no longer fit together and nothing makes sense. I need you to show me how to be me again.” _

But there’s another part of her, too, a part which is angry at him for not trusting her, for not believing her, for turning his back on her on Horizon, and sometimes her imaginary letters aren’t so kind to him.

_ “Dear Kaidan. How could you? I loved you. I trusted you. I thought, in return, you trusted me, too. But I died, and now I’m back and none of it makes sense, but I’m still me. Cracked and broken, but still me, and if you can’t trust me now, when I need you more than ever, then maybe you don’t deserve me.” _

Through it all, there’s one common thread, one underlying theme in all of her imaginary conversations with him, one line that gets to the heart of her feelings.

_ Why aren’t you here? _

He should be he here. He should have been with her when she went to Alchera to place the monument. He, more than anyone else, knew what the Normandy had meant to her. He’d been with her from the very beginning, from before Eden Prime, from before Saren and the Geth, before this whole mess began.

He’d been there to listen to her vent her frustrations as the Council refused to listen to her. He’d been there to console her when Ashley died, and she was wracked with guilt and grief in equal measures. He’d been there, on Ilos, when they learned about the fate of the Protheans and the Reapers.

And he’d been there when the Normandy was destroyed. When she died.

But now he wasn’t, and she hated him for that. She hated how his words from Horizon dug deep and cut her to the very core of her being, she hated that she’d found her old helmet on Alchera, because it was a reminder of who she used to be.

It was a reminder that she _ died_, and by all rights, should not be here today. And yet, here she is. A ghost in the shape of a woman.

She drags herself to the bathroom and forces herself to look, really _ look _ at her reflection in the mirror. She’s almost afraid she won’t see anything. As she lifts a hand to touch her cheek, she worries for a moment that maybe it will just pass right through her, as if she weren’t really there, but her hand makes contact with solid flesh.

In the mirror, she sees wide, haunted blue eyes staring back at her. Long, blonde hair that frizzes around her face, still soft and stringy and damp from the shower. The same as she’s always looked.

But she has new scars, scars that glow with an eerie orange undertone, scars that show the cybernetics under her skin that are keeping her alive, and that’s what scares her. Her outside looks mostly the same, but what of her inside? What had they done to bring her back?

Despite herself, tears well up in her eyes once more; tears mourning the loss of who she used to be, and tears for the deep unknown of who she has become, who she is trying to come to terms with it.

It is these moments, where she is entirely alone, that she lets herself be vulnerable. Tomorrow, she’ll put on her armor again, both literal and metaphorical. Tomorrow, she will be _ Commander Shepard, hero of the Blitz, first human Spectre, Savior of the Citadel. _ Commander Shepard, _ Alliance Navy_, because despite everything, that’s still who she is.

But for now, she lets herself be Lily—just Lily. Earthborn girl who had a rough start to life, who never knew her parents. Lily, who died back there, above Alchera, drowning in the stars.

Lily, ghost in the shape of a woman.

* * *

Across the galaxy, on a separate planet, worlds and light years away, Kaidan is struggling to concentrate. Now that most of Horizon is gone, he’s moved on, assigned a new job, a new mission, as if everything were the same as always.

But it’s not the same, because he saw _ her_. He’d heard the reports, of course, that Commander Shepard had been seen on Omega. He’d both desperately craved it to be true and fiercely wished it weren’t. Because if it were true, it meant she was alive, oh God, she was _ alive_.

But if it wasn’t true, it meant she was truly gone, and his heart would break into a thousand pieces again, because it’s been two years, but he’s still sometimes not sure how to exist in this galaxy without her.

Not just because he loved her— (_l__oves _ her? Sometimes he isn’t sure anymore)—but because she is Commander Shepard, living legend. And she can’t just die, alone in the emptiness of space, where they can’t even recover her body.

But then he saw her on Horizon, and he realized that it was all true, and in that moment, his relief was overshadowed by his anger, because if she was alive, how _ dare _ she let him think she was dead for the past two years?

He’s been doing a little better lately. Or at least, he had been, before he saw her again. His Alliance-mandated therapist was slowly starting to help, the coping mechanisms he’d originally written off as bullshit slowly starting to help him heal.

He’d even gone on that date with the doctor from the Citadel. Sure, he’d spent the entire time comparing her to Shepard, to _ Lily_, and finding her coming up short in ways that weren’t her fault (no one could live up to Shepard), but at least he’d _ tried_.

In that moment on Horizon, when his anger overshadowed his relief, he said some things that he regrets. But at the same time, how was he supposed to trust a dead woman walking? He’d follow Shepard to the end of the galaxy and back, but she’d _ died_, and he’d been slowly, sort of, almost getting over it—not getting _ over _ it, there was no getting over it, but getting to a point where it wasn’t so raw—and then she just showed up again.

Her memorial service had been beautiful. Beautiful and heartbreaking. It hurt like hell that they hadn’t been able to find her body, that they couldn’t properly lay her to rest and give her the best goddamn hero’s funeral the galaxy has ever seen.

But it was still beautiful. Everyone was there—Liara, Garrus, Tali, Wrex, Joker. Captain Anderson. Admiral Hackett. It seemed like half of the entire Alliance Navy had been there, and why shouldn’t they be? She’d been an amazing woman, and they all deserved to honor and mourn her.

And now, two years later, she shows up again, and he’s torn between _ how dare you _ and _ I was so lost without you_. But is it really her? That’s what worries him.

She’s with _ Cerberus_, and the thought of that turns the whiskey bitter in his mouth. Was it not enough to lose the woman he loved? Must he now be tormented by her half-return, the shell of who she once was, close enough that he craves her, yet different enough that he doesn’t trust her?

It’s as if the universe is dangling all his hopes and dreams in front of his face, daring him to reach out and grab it, but he’s scared that if he does, she’ll crumble into dust and he’ll be alone. 

Again.

Her return is taunting, tantalizing, and oh so dangerous, and he can’t make up his mind about it, about _ her_. He wishes… well. He wishes a lot of things. He wishes he’d ignored her commands to leave, that he’d stayed and made sure she was safe.

He wishes she’d never died; he wishes she’d stayed dead; he wishes everything didn’t _ hurt _ so damn much. But she did, she didn’t, and everything did.

So, here they are. Shepard—or some facsimile of Shepard—is out there with Cerberus, in the Normandy SR-2, both the same and entirely different, and here he is. Sitting at a bar on the Citadel, knocking back a glass of whiskey, trying to figure out what to do now.

They are worlds apart, nothing but the strangled cry of space separating them, but when he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine her sitting there, next to him.

“To Shepard, bravest woman I’ve ever known.” He lifts his glass in a quiet, solitary toast. “Stay safe out there, Lily. I can’t handle losing you a second time.”


	2. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that took a bit longer to update than I was expecting! But the good news is, I've already started work on the next chapter, so hopefully it won't take too long. Thank you all for your wonderful comments, they really mean so much to me.
> 
> And a massive shout-out, as always, to h34rt1ly for catching typos, offering feedback on characterization, and genrally being an awesome beta.
> 
> Also: this fic has a playlist now!

* * *

Lily Shepard is in the middle of gazing out the window from her high-rise apartment in Alliance headquarters, needing a distraction from the news reports she’s been reading on her datapad. She keeps hoping that maybe one day she’ll turn on the news to find that the Alliance has actually decided to _do_ something about the Reaper threat, rather than sit on their asses, but no such luck.

It turns out that gazing out the window isn’t the best form of distraction, as that only makes her equally frustrated. It’s a beautiful day outside, sun shining, blue skies… and she’s stuck inside. Six months of house arrest, and no word when—or even if—it would end, and she feels like she’s starting to lose her mind.

The subtle _whoosh_ of the doors breaks her out of her reverie and she turns to see James enter with a salute.

“Commander.”

She knows he still calls her that to be respectful, but there’s a part of her that chafes at the word— and the salute. It’s a reminder of what she’s lost, and it stings. Hero of the Blitz and now this, disgraced former commander under semi-permanent house arrest because she had to make a tough decision.

“You know you’re not supposed to call me that anymore,” she remarks mildly.

James just shrugs. “I’m not supposed to salute, either.”

_And yet here we are_, she thinks.

“The defense committee wants to see you,” James continues. “We gotta go, it sounded urgent.”

Shepard tosses the datapad onto her bed and tightens the elastic keeping her long, blonde hair securely piled on top of her head, before following James out the door, dodging other soldiers running about.

Alliance Command is always a hubbub of activity, and it takes her a moment to readjust to that. She doesn’t leave her apartment much, it’s too depressing to be right in the middle of the action but know that she’s no longer part of it.

“What’s going on?” she asks as she tries to keep up with James’ long strides. “What did they say?”

“They didn’t say,” James said. “Only that they needed you. _Now_.”

Shepard frowns, considering the implications of what it all might mean, when she spies a familiar face in the crowd. The man coming towards them is in Alliance blues, crisp and freshly pressed, his Admiral badge and service medals gleaming. Though his eyebrows are drawn together in thought, she knows how the corners of his eyes crinkle when he smiles and she can’t help but crack a smile of her own upon seeing him.

“Anderson.” Throughout these hellish past six months, Anderson had been her staunchest ally, defending her during her hearing and lightening her sentence as much as he could. He and James were the only two who made her feel like a glimmer of who she used to be, and not… this. _Commander Shepard, Hero of the Blitz, first human Spectre. Commander Shepard, the woman who saved humanity from the Collectors._

But none of that matters anymore, not after what she’d done to the Alpha Relay. Now she’s a mass murderer, a commander without a ship or anyone under her, a soldier without a war to fight.

_A ghost in the shape of a woman._

Those words, the ones she’d thought to herself on Alchera, come back to her and she almost smiles at how true it’s become— but thinking of Alchera leads down a dark path, and she can’t think of _him_ right now. How was that only just over a year ago? It felt like an eternity.

“It’s good to see you, Shepard,” Anderson is saying. “How have you been holding up these days?”

“Oh, you know,” Shepard says. “It’s not so bad once you get used to the hot showers and soft beds and good food.”

Her tone is light, but they both know being relieved from duty has wrecked Shepard. She enlisted the day she turned 18, determined to make a better life for herself, to escape her life in the gangs. She’s been a soldier for too long to be anything else.

“We’ll get this sorted out,” Anderson says, and Shepard isn’t sure if he means whatever the defense committee has summoned her for, or her detention and house arrest. Or maybe both.

“What’s going on?” she asks as she dodges to avoid running into another soldier. “I know Alliance Command is often busy, but why is everyone in this much of a rush?”

“Admiral Hackett’s mobilizing the fleets,” Anderson says, his tone grim. “Everyone is trying to figure out where to go and what to do. Something big is headed our way, and fast.”

Despite the rush, Shepard can’t help but pause at this, her breath catching in her throat. “The Reapers?” Behind her, she can hear James swear softly under his breath, the information clearly new to him as well.

“We don’t know. Not for certain,” Anderson admits, and Shepard’s eyes narrow.

“What else could it be? We _know_ they’re coming.”

Anderson sighs. “If I knew for sure…”

“If it is them, you know we’re not ready,” Shepard says, and it’s hard not to pull the _I told you so_ card. “Not by a long shot.”

Anderson just shakes his head. “Tell that to the defense committee.”

“The council, the defense committee… we both know that’s a waste of time,” Shepard says. “Unless we’re trying out a new strategy of talking the Reapers to death. They’ve never listened to me in the past.”

“They’re scared,” Anderson says. “It’s easier to blame Saren and the Geth, to dismiss Sovereign as a one-off threat, to pat ourselves on the back for defeating the Collectors and be done with it all. The Reapers are far bigger than anyone wants to think about.”

“That’s no excuse,” Shepard says, all of the old frustrations coming back. “Pretending it’s not happening isn’t going to make it go away.”

“None of them have seen what you’ve seen,” Anderson points out. “It’s less real for them. You’ve faced down an actual Reaper. Hell, you spoke to one and then blew the damn thing up. You’ve seen how the Collectors were harvesting us for their gain, you’ve see what they plan to do to us. You know more about this enemy than anyone.”

“Right,” Shepard says, eyes narrowing as the pent-up frustration and anger at the past six months—hell, the past few _years_—starts to boil over. “Is that why they grounded me? Took away my ship? Is that why they’ve always been so great about listening to me in the past?”

“You know that’s not fair, Shepard,” Anderson says, pausing to look her in the eyes, and for a moment, she feels like a child being lectured by a parent. “Hundreds of thousands of batarians died when you blew up that relay.”

Shepard bites back a sigh. “I know. You don’t think I would have done anything else, if I’d had the choice? But it was that or let the Reapers come right in through our back door. I thought if I bought us some time…”

Well. She’d thought that after seeing the Collector base, after destroying it and learning the truth about how the Reapers and Harbinger were behind it all, and then dealing with Object Rho… she’d hoped that maybe _finally_, someone would listen to her when she warned of imminent Reaper invasion, but all they’d done was put her on trial for working with Cerberus and for destroying the entire Bahak system.

“I know, Shepard,” Anderson says, his voice gentle. “And so does the committee. If they hadn’t believed you about that, you would have been court-martialed and left to rot in the brig.”

“Your good word probably didn’t hurt, either,” Shepard mutters.

“I trust you,” Anderson says. “And so does the committee.”

_Then why the hell does no one ever listen to me?_ she thinks. Instead, she just sighs and shakes her head. “I’m no politician, Anderson. We both know I’m not the most… tactful. I’m just a soldier.”

Hell, she wasn’t even that anymore.

“I don’t need you to be tactful.” Anderson picks up the pace again and Shepard follows after him. “I just need you to do whatever the hell it takes to stop these Reapers.”

_What the fuck do you think I’ve been _trying_ to do?_ she thinks, but she doesn’t say it aloud. It’s not Anderson’s fault; he’s always believed her, even when her claims admittedly could be seen as outlandish. But the stakes are too high for her to be nice or gentle, and she can’t help how goddamn _weary_ she is. And the real battle hasn’t even started yet.

They pass through the doors into the anteroom before the courts, and Shepard can’t help but stand up a little straighter, tighten the pins in her hair just a little more. Even James, who isn’t involved in this, straightens up slightly and salutes the officer at the desk.

“They’re expecting the two of you,” the officer says. “I’ll take you there.”

“Good luck in there, Shepard,” James says, offering her a handshake. “If anyone can pull this off, it’s you.”

“Thanks, James,” she says, almost wishing he could come in with her. He’d been a steadfast ally and friend these past six months, and if it came down to an argument with the committee—which, knowing how these things had gone in the past, it likely would—she could use another person on her side.

“Anderson.”

The voice, husky and low and achingly _familiar_ cuts through Shepard’s thoughts and she freezes, afraid of what she might find if she turns around. So instead she stares resolutely ahead at the wall, but whether it’s genuine hurt or petty anger keeping her from turning around and facing him, she’s not quite sure.

“Shepard.”

At the sound of his voice addressing her, Shepard bites back a sigh, equal parts longing and frustration. Carefully maintaining a neutral expression, she turns around and sees him standing there.

She knew it would be, she’d recognize that voice anywhere, but there was still a tiny part of her that hoped maybe she wouldn’t have to deal with this right now. But of course, as per usual, the universe was against her.

“Kaidan?” she says, the word coming out as more of a question than she intended, as if he might be someone, anyone else.

“How’d it go in there, Major?” Anderson asks.

Shepard flinches, _visibly_ flinches at that remark, and she wonders if she’s imagining it, but she swears she can see Kaidan’s jaw clench. _Major? _Since when was Kaidan a _Major_?

“Okay, I think,” Kaidan says, ignoring Shepard’s reaction. “Hard to know for sure, they don’t give much away. I’m just waiting for orders and assignment now.”

“Major?” Shepard asks, trying—but if she were to be perfectly honest, failing—to keep her voice carefully neutral, as if she were just a colleague, just someone casually interested in this news.

“You hadn’t heard?” Anderson raises his eyebrows in surprise.

“I’m a bit… out of the loop these days,” Shepard forces out through ground teeth.

“Sorry, ma’am, didn’t mean to keep you out of the loop,” Kaidan says, but he avoids looking her directly in the eyes.

Shepard forces a smile, wishing she could scream instead, and knowing that she can’t keep the hurt out of her eyes. _Ma’am_? When was the last time he’d called her _ma’am_? Sometime long ago, back when they still thought Saren was just a rogue spectre and the biggest threat they had to deal with.

Long before they’d ever admitted their feelings for each other. Even as they became friends, Shepard had discouraged his formality, insisting he at least call her Commander, if he couldn’t manage Shepard. She’d been Commander, and then Shepard, and then _Lily_, and now she was _ma’am_?

“I’m sure you had your reasons, _Major_,” she says, her voice so icy that Anderson glances between the two of them with a slightly concerned look, but they have bigger concerns right now.

“Yeah, I… I suppose I did,” Kaidan admits, still not looking her in the eye, but then he pauses. “Still, it’s… it’s good to see you.”

Much as she wants to hear those words, there’s a part of Shepard that chafes at that. _If it’s so good to see me, why didn’t you ever visit me when I was under house arrest? Why did you never make contact with me? Why have you been ignoring me so resolutely, despite everything?_

She could have really used a friend these past six months, but there had been nothing but radio silence from him.

The last thing she wants or needs right now is false hope, so she steels her heart against those words, turning instead to face the officer who was approaching them.

“Admiral. Major. They’re ready for you,” she says.

“Come on.” Anderson turns to leave and Shepard pauses just a moment, looking at Kaidan, who had turned to look at the officer as well. But then he turns, facing her, and _finally _looks her in the eyes as he offers her a hesitant half-smile, and she wishes his expression wasn’t so hard to read.

Swallowing down the complicated feelings that arise with that taunting smile, she brushes past him to follow Anderson, but not before she hears James speak up behind her.

“You know the Commander?”

“I used to,” Kaidan replies, and Shepard bites the inside of her cheek to keep her emotions in check.

How dare he act as if it’s _she_ who’s changed? How dare he act as if she’s a mystery, as if she hasn’t made every effort to prove to him that she’s still the woman he loved? How _dare_ he tell her to her face that it’s good to see her, and then admit he doesn’t even know her anymore?

But she needs a clear head to deal with the defense committee, so she takes a deep breath, smooths down the edges of her shirt, and follows Anderson into the room.

* * *

“Admiral Anderson. Shepard.” One of the senior committee members greets the two of them as they walk into the room.

“What’s the situation?” Shepard asks. “Why did you want to see me?”

“Ah… we were hoping maybe you could tell us.” The same committee member offers up a sheepish smile, as if he realized the irony of asking for her help now, after they’d dismissed her so many times in the past.

An officer hands Shepard a datapad and she scrolls through the reports, frowning. Kar’shan was reportedly under bombardment by some mysterious, lethal force. Taetrus had gone dark, and the Turian Hierarchy had officially declared themselves to be at war.

“The reports coming in are unlike anything we’ve seen,” another council member was saying. It’s not just what you see there, whole colonies have gone dark and we’ve lost contact with anything outside of the Sol Relay.”

“Whatever this is, it’s incomprehensibly powerful,” the third council member says, folding his hands in front of him and frowning. “It’s taken us by surprise and completely overwhelmed us.”

_Maybe if you’d listened to me, it wouldn’t have overwhelmed us quite so much_, she thinks bitterly, but now is not the time to be petty.

Sighing, Shepard looks up from the datapad and squares her shoulders. “You brought me here to confirm what you already know, to confirm what I’ve been saying for _years_. The Reapers are here.”

There was an uncomfortable silence among the council members before finally, one of them turned to Shepard. “Then… how do we stop them?”

_We don’t_, Shepard couldn’t help but think. As relieved as she was that they were finally listening to her, it felt like too little, too late.

Instead, she shakes her head. “It’s not that simple. This isn’t about strategy or tactics, this is about _survival._ The Reapers are more advanced than us. More powerful. More intelligent. They outdo us in every way. They’ll never fear us, and they’ll _never_ take pity on us.”

She looks in the eyes of every council member as she speaks, making sure they understand the full weight of her words. If they’d listened to her before, it would have still been a nearly impossible fight. After all, how could you prepare for something like this?

But now, when the Reapers are here, on their doorstep? They had very little to stand on.

“But… there must be a way,” one council member says, tears shining in her eyes. “Something. Anything.”

Shepard pauses, considering. “If we have any hope of defeating them, we have to stand together. Everyone in this goddamn galaxy has to unite and work together if we’re going to survive this.”

“That’s it? That’s your plan?” One council member was already shaking his head.

_Well, maybe if you’d listened to me earlier, we could have come up with a better plan_, she thinks, but before she can think of a slightly more diplomatic way of saying that, an officer monitoring the screens pipes up.

“Admiral, we’ve lost contact with Luna Base.” Her eyes are wide, voice shaky.

“The moon?” Even Anderson, who’s believed Shepard this whole time, sounds surprised. “They couldn’t be that close already…”

“But… we have everything on high alert,” the female council member says. “How’d they get past our defenses?”

“Sir, UK headquarters has visual,” the first officer says. Shakily, she taps in a command on the screen in front of her, and static lights up on the monitor.

The image clears up, showing a young soldier shouting something into the camera, but it can’t be heard over the static of the connection and noise of his environment. Behind him, there’s nothing but chaos—fires burning as plumes of black smoke rise into the sky.

There’s a bone-chilling metallic screech, an explosion that knocks the soldier down, and then nothing. Signal lost.

It reminds Shepard entirely too much of Eden Prime, and she shakes her head. Why does she always have to arrive to things too late? Is she forever destined to watch chaos and destruction rain, powerless to stop it?

A second later, the signal is restored, the screen splitting to show four, five, half a dozen different images. _Reapers_.

Reapers on Earth, buildings toppling, panicked news reports, destruction and chaos and death and _if only they had listened to her maybe it wouldn’t be quite so bad_.

Anderson is the first one to break the silence. “Why haven’t we heard from Admiral Hackett?”

No one knows how to answer that, but Shepard prays that he’s still alive, because if they had any hope of survival, they could use all the help they could get. Especially someone with the power that Hackett commands.

“What do we do?” The council member who speaks is panicked, raw terror in his voice, and despite Shepard’s frustrations at how everyone has ignored her warnings, she feels a bit of sympathy as well.

She _knew_ this was coming, she couldn’t avoid the truth. But when faced with a truth like this, could you really blame people for choosing false hope? And now it was irrefutable, and they all had to face the same truth she’d faced when she went face to face with Sovereign.

The Reapers were coming for them, and it was going to be bigger than anything they’d ever faced before.

“We do the only thing we _can_ do,” Shepard says, gesturing at the monitor, where an image of a Reaper still lingers. “We fight, or we die.”

“We should get to the Normandy,” Anderson says. “We’ll need her in this fight.”

Before Shepard can even process that, even think about what it would mean to be back on her ship again—or question whether or not she was still under house arrest and if Anderson included her when he said ‘we,’— a low, rumbling sound breaks the silence.

A it gets louder and louder, everyone exchanges panicked looks, hoping it isn’t what they fear, but knowing it most likely is.

“Oh my god,” the female council member whispers, voice full of horror, and Shepard looks out the large floor-to-ceiling windows in time to see orange lightning flash across the sky.

Metal claws sink into view, and a laser cuts through the landscape with a high-pitched buzzing noise, a sound that Shepard recognizes far too well from the fight against Sovereign so long ago.

“Move!” she shouts as the Reaper comes fully into view. “Go go go!”

She’s already running by the time the blast hits, shattering the windows, toppling the pedestal where the Alliance council members sat. With their backs to the blast, they’re not so lucky.

Shepard dodges debris, throwing up a barrier to try and shield herself from the worst of it, but six months of no proper biotic training and she’s gotten a bit rusty in her skills. The shockwave hits next, hard enough that her barrier is useless, and she’s tossed against the back wall like a rag doll, everything going black.

* * *

Everything is blurry and hazy and her head is throbbing as she wavers somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, but distantly, she hears Anderson calling for her.

“Shepard! Come on, Shepard, get up!”

Groaning, she opens her eyes and props herself up on an elbow, accepting Anderson’s hand as he helps her up. The room is destroyed, the council members all dead, several small fires burning.

“Here, take this.” Anderson hands her his spare gun. It’s been six months since she’s held one, the longest she’s gone without fighting since before she joined the Alliance, but some things are like second nature to her.

“This is Admiral Anderson,” he’s saying into his comms. “Is anyone there? Report in! Major Alenko, is that you? What’s your status?”

_Kaidan_. In all the chaos of the Reapers, she’d nearly forgotten about him. _Please let him be okay_, she thinks. From the bits of the one-sided conversation she can hear from Anderson, it seems like he is, which is a relief.

“We can’t raise the Normandy from here,” Anderson says, still on comms. “You’ll have to contact them, and we’ll meet you at the landing zone. Anderson out.”

Shepard walks out to where the windows used to be, where there’s now just a giant hole, and stares out at the landscape. There are multiple Reapers, their laser beams cutting through buildings with that eerie whine.

The wholesale destruction that the Reapers are inflicting upon the landscape is bigger than even Shepard could have imagined, smoke and ash from distant fires filling the air, and she’s paralyzed as she watches it all. _It’s too late_, she thinks. We’re _too late_.

“Come on, Shepard.” Anderson is at her side, gently grabbing her elbow and leading her towards the edge. “Kaidan’s headed to the Normandy, they’ll pick us up if we can get to the spaceport.”

He pauses for a moment and shakes his head. “These things are massive up close.”

She follows him out of the room, onto a ledge below, picking her way carefully across the thin metal beams, trying not to look down, trying not to look at the Reapers, trying to do something other than panic.

“How do you stop something so massive?” Anderson asks, but Shepard knows it’s a rhetorical question. Or at least, she _hopes_ it is, because she’s goddamn tired of being the one everyone turns to for answers.

She knows this war has only begun, she knows that she’s still _Commander Shepard_ in the eyes of many, she knows that she has by far the most experience fighting Reapers. And so she knows that she will continue to be that person, but right now, she just wants to let loose—use her biotics to pick up the biggest object she can and toss it halfway across the room, hit a punching bag until it falls off its hooks, she doesn’t care. Just _something_.

She follows Anderson over the rooftops, dodging Reaper beams and stray debris. After several minutes in silence—the whine of Reaper lasers and the sound of burning buildings not withstanding—Anderson gets another comm message.

“Major, do you read me? I’m patching Shepard in,” he says.

Kaidan’s voice comes over the comms, interrupted by steady bursts of gunfire. “We’re almost to the Normandy. I’ve got Lieutennt Vega with me, but we’re taking heavy fire.”

“We’re about five minutes out,” Anderson says, but there’s no response from Kaidan, just static. “Major? Major, do you read? Damnit!”

_Please stay safe_, Shepard thinks. _Even if you still hate me, just stay alive._

“Husks!” Anderson calls out, and Shepard shudders when she sees the luminescent blue creatures crawling up the side of the building.

She empties her clip into them, taking them down before they can reach the rooftop, but they keep coming and soon she’s out of ammo. Despite the chaos, despite the worry over Kaidan, she grins.

“Time to have a bit of fun.” She hasn’t had a chance to properly flex her biotic muscles in so long. She catches a group of them in a singularity, then knocks them back with a shockwave, the biotic explosion ripping them apart.

With her biotics and Anderson’s years of experience, they make short work out of the rest of the husks, but there’s no time to celebrate. A Reaper beam hits the small room next to where Shepard and Anderson are, and Shepard barely ducks in time as glass explodes out everywhere.

“You okay?” Anderson call out and Shepard groans in response as she picks herself up. The ladder off the side of the rooftop has been destroyed in the blast, leaving them with the only option of venturing into the room that had just been hit. Inside, thick, acrid smoke fills the air, and Shepard coughs and gasps, trying to get enough fresh air to breathe.

“God, what a mess…” Shepard shakes her head as she takes it all in. It’s only been what, fifteen minutes since the Reapers attacked? And already so much death, so much devastation. How were they going to survive?

“We need to keep going and find a way out of here,” Anderson says gently, placing a hand on her shoulder, and Shepard nods.

There’s a door at the back of the room that leads out of there, but it’s jammed, stuck in a half open position. With a grunt, Shepard manages to force it open, though she knows she won’t be able to hold it for long.

“Through here!” she calls out and Anderson goes through first, but Shepard pauses before following, the faint sound of crying distracting her.

“Do you hear that?” she mutters, more to herself than Anderson. Slowly, she turns back, glancing around the room, until she spots the source—a small boy curled up in the airshaft, sniffling.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she says, extending a hand to him. She’s never been much of a kid person, but there’s something about this boy and the scared, vulnerable look in his eyes that makes her heart ache.

It reminds her of herself as a child.

“Everyone’s dying,” he whimpers, and Shepard wishes there was something she could say, but what _can_ she say? Everyone _is_ dying.

“Come on, we need to get you out of here,” she says, extending a hand. “Take my hand. I know it’s scary, but I can get you to safety.”

But the boy just shakes his head. “You can’t save me.”

“Shepard, through here!” Anderson calls out. “We need to get to the Normandy before things get worse.”

“Just a second!” Shepard calls out over her shoulder, but when she turns back to the boy again, to try and figure out how to convince him he has to come with her, he’s gone.

Shepard blinks and rubs her eyes. Was she hallucinating? Maybe she hit her head harder than she thought in that explosion. But there’s no time to worry about that right now, because everything around them is burning and somewhere out there, Kaidan and James are waiting for them, holding off Reaper forces.

Hopefully. Hopefully they are still out there. They _have_ to be.

“This whole place is a goddamned mess,” Anderson grunts as he struggles to lift some debris that’s fallen across their path.

Shepard doesn’t say anything as she uses her biotics to help clear the path, still thinking about the child that may or may not have actually been there.

“Every minute, every _second_ that these machines are here, thousands of innocent people die,” Anderson says, continuing onward. “I won’t be responsible for that.”

Shepard follows with a sigh. “I know. It’s always hard in war, knowing that no matter how hard you try, you can’t save everyone. But this? This is even worse; this is unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”

“Exactly,” Anderson says. “You’ve saved a lot of people in your time, Shepard. But you said it, this is bigger than anything we’ve faced before. If only the Reapers were as easy to deal with as batarians.”

Shepard laughs at that, more out of the absurdity of the idea than actual humor. She’d earned her place in the Alliance through her actions during the Blitz. Back then, as a young, green soldier, she’d thought that single-handedly holding off batarian invaders was the hardest thing she’d have to do.

Sure, there’d be plenty more fights, but what could be harder than rallying a ragtag group of colonists to fight against batarian pirates, and then single-handedly holding them off when the colonists fell back?

But then Saren happened. And the Geth. And Sovereign. And the Collectors, and Harbinger and Object Rho and learning about the Alpha Relay, and now the actual Reaper invasion that she’d been trying to stop for _years_.

What she wouldn’t give for a simple batarian pirate raid.

“They hit so fast,” Anderson says, bringing her back to the present. “I thought we’d have more time before… this.”

_Maybe if the Council had actually listened to me_, she thinks. _Maybe if people had heeded my warning more than three years ago._

Instead, she just shrugs. “We knew they were coming.” _Or at least _I _did_.

“And yet they still just cut through our defenses as if it were nothing,” Anderson remarks and again, Shepard has to restrain herself from pointing out that if people had actually fucking _listened_ to her, maybe their defenses would have been better, maybe they wouldn’t have been overwhelmed so fast, maybe they would have had more time.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. There’s no point in dwelling on maybes. It is what it is, and that’s something everyone has to live with. _If we live through this_. There’s no guarantee that humanity will survive.

“We need to get to the Citadel, talk to the Council.” As if he knows that she’s going to protest, Anderson continues on before Shepard can say anything. “You know the fight will be everywhere soon enough. You said it yourself, our only hope is to stand together.”

Shepard sighs. “You sure they’ll help us?”

“No,” Anderson admits. “But you’re a Council Spectre. That has to count for something, right?”

This time, Shepard can’t help herself. “What, like all the times it did before?”

“I know,” Anderson says, offering her a hand to help her across the chasm. “But it’s different now. The Reapers are _here_, we have indisputable proof.”

Shepard sighs and follows Anderson outside and down towards the ground. Somehow, things have only gotten worse in the time they’ve spent making their way through the ruined building.

There’s a Reaper right in front of them, and Shepard isn’t sure if she wants to scream, cry, or unload her thermal clip into it and then hit it with her most powerful warp. Maybe all of the above. But it’s too big of a target, and fortunately, they’re too _small_ of a target, so they continue.

“Major Alenko, are you there?” Anderson says. “We’re in sight of the spaceport, ETA three minutes. How are you holding up?”

“We’ve made it to the Normandy,” Kaidan says over the comms, and Shepard breathes a sigh of relief. It’s good to hear his voice. “But we’re taking heavy fire and—oh god. They’re trying to take down the dreadnought.”

The line goes dead.

“Damnit,” Anderson says. “They’re in trouble, we have to hurry.”

But before anyone can go anywhere, the Reaper dreadnought blasts a building not too far from them, close enough that when it hits like a nuclear blast, the shockwave knocks loose the platform Shepard and Anderson had been standing on, sending them tumbling down the slope.

Shepard hits the ground hard, grunting as her shoulder and hip take the brunt of the impact. She’s too hyped up on adrenaline to be in pain right now, but she’s going to feel that tomorrow, especially since all she’s wearing is a tank top and cargo pants.

What she wouldn’t give for some proper armor right about now.

They’re halfway there when Anderson points to something up ahead. “We’ve got incoming!”

Shepard dives behind a fallen piece of debris, already throwing out a singularity before she even gets a good look at the incoming hostiles.

“What are those things?” Anderson mutters and Shepard shudders. Coming towards them are a group of grotesque creatures, in some ways reminiscent of husks, but something entirely different all the same. Knowing the origin of husks, she’s not too sure she wants to know what these new creatures are.

“Don’t know, don’t have time to care right now.” Shepard says, hitting her singularity with a warp to take care of the hostiles. Between the steady rhythm of Anderson’s gunfire and the low thrum of her biotics, she loses herself in the fight and it feels _good _to let go like that. She can almost pretend it’s just another fight, just business as usual, and not something new, something incomprehensibly big.

In short order, the hostiles are taken care of, and there’s an odd calm that settles over the battlefield. Above them and around them, the Reapers are still destroying the city, people are still dying, but the immediate threat to them has temporarily ceased. It feels wrong, somehow, as if everything around them should be chaos to reflect what’s happening elsewhere.

“Look over there,” Anderson says, gesturing to what’s little more than a pile of rubble sitting a few feet ahead. “Looks like a downed gunship. See if you can find a radio, we might have better luck contacting the Normandy with a stronger signal.”

Shepard picks her way through the rubble, trying not to think too much about their current situation, or what might have happened to the people flying the gunship. _One step at a time,_ she tells herself. _We will take this one step at a time and we _can _win this war_.

But what if they can’t?

“Shepard, over here!” Anderson calls, and Shepard is back on task again. “I found a radio.”

After a moment of fiddling, the radio turns on and both Anderson and Shepard breathe a sigh of relief. At least one thing is going right.

“Normandy, do you read?” Anderson asks. “Normandy, come in!”

A moment later, the bittersweet sound of Kaidan’s voice. “Admiral, we read you. What’s your location?”

“By a downed gunship in the harbor,” Anderson says. “I’m activating its distress signal. Things are getting dicey down here. What’s your situation? Major?”

There’s nothing but static, and Anderson growls. “Damnit, I lost the signal. We’ll have to hope the distress beacon does its job and they can find us.”

“And soon,” Shepard says, looking to the horizon where a new wave of hostiles is approaching. “We’ve got company!”

“You take point, I’ll cover you,” she adds, forgetting for a moment that she’s not even a commander anymore, and with _Anderson_, not one of her former squadmates. “Uh… if that’s okay, sir.”

Luckily, Anderson doesn’t mind the breach of conduct. “I would have suggested the same thing.”

While Anderson wreaks havoc with his assault rifle, Shepard only fires the occasional shot, relying mostly on her biotics. A well-placed singularity here to keep the hostiles helplessly floating, a throw there when they start getting too close.

“These bastards keep coming,” Anderson mutters. “I hope the Normandy gets here soon.”

“You and me both,” Shepard agrees. As good as it feels to use her biotics again, after six months of house arrest, she’s already aware of the toll it’s taking on her body to throw out her whole arsenal of biotic skills with no warmup.

“Look out!” Anderson calls, but a second too late, and Shepard doesn’t see the incoming hostile raising its gun until it’s already fired, and two bullets strike her left arm.

She clenches her teeth, against the pain, but against the frustration as well—it’s the type of wound that would, at worst, have caused a bit of bruising as it struck her armor, but she doesn’t _have_ armor.

So instead she’s bleeding from her goddamned arm, and it’s a fairly superficial wound that medi-gel will easily fix, but she shouldn’t have to deal with it in the first place; she shouldn’t have to deal with the Reapers, not like _t__his_, not without a plan and preparation and support, but here they are.

Shepard lets loose a noise that’s half battle cry, and half growl of frustration, and expels all her built up biotic energy in one big blast, flaring out away from her, which instantly destroys a small group of hostiles.

But they’re still coming, and there’s no end in sight, and just when Shepard is starting to wonder how they’re going to even get through _this_— the very beginning of what will be a long and hard war— there’s a beautiful sound over the radio.

“Cavalry has arrived!” Joker’s voice comes in loud and clear, and a moment later, the Normandy swoops overhead, a blast from her guns easily taking out the rest of the hostiles. “Boom, baby!”

“About time!” Anderson remarks, but Shepard is already running.

“Let’s go!” Seeing her ship again is a balm for her aching heart, and the pain coursing through her body is temporarily forgotten as she scrambles up the side of the downed gunship to get to higher ground.

Once the Normandy is a few feet away, she takes a running leap, landing hard, but Kaidan is there, offering her a hand up, and _damn_ if he doesn’t look good, gun at the ready and hazel eyes steely with determination.

It takes her a moment to remember that he likely still hates her.

“Welcome aboard, Shepard,” he says, and Shepard bites her lip. She _knows_ now is not the time for personal drama, the stakes are far too high to worry about whether or not her ex-boyfriend still hates her or whether or not there’s any chance they might reconcile, but… it’s hard not to be frustrated.

Why does he constantly have to send such mixed signals?

“Anderson, come on!” Shepard calls out as Anderson approaches.

Anderson doesn’t say anything for a moment, he just looks over at a passing Alliance shuttle, marines in full gear inside, ready to fight, and when he turns back to her, she knows what he’s going to say. She knows it, but that doesn’t mean she wants to hear it.

“Shepard, I’m not going,” Anderson says. “You saw those men a moment ago. You’ve seen the resistance on the ground. There’s a million more like them out there, and they need a leader.”

“We’re in this fight together, Anderson,” Shepard says, but she knows once his mind is made up, there’s no changing it. They’ve always been alike in that regard.

Anderson shakes his head. “It’s a fight we can’t win, not without help. You know that. We _need_ that help. You said it yourself, we need every species to present a united front if we even have a hope of defeating the Reapers. We need _you_ to gather the forces. You and the Normandy are our best shot at that, the people know who you are and respect you.”

“But sir—”

“Go the Council. Get their support, convince them to help us,” Anderson says, cutting Shepard’s protests off.

“And if they don’t listen?” Shepard asks. “Like all the times before?”

“_Make_ them listen,” Anderson says. “Do whatever it takes. Now go, that’s an order!”

Unable to give up without one more last-ditch effort at convincing Anderson to join them, Shepard raises an eyebrow. “I don’t take orders from you anymore, remember? I’m not Alliance.”

“Consider yourself reinstated… _Commander_.” Anderson pulls her dog tags out of his pocket and tosses them to her as she shakes her head.

How long had he been carrying those around? Had he been trying to get her reinstated, before the Reapers attacked, or did he carry them around just in case? In case of emergency, open pocket and reinstate Lily Shepard as an Alliance Commander?

But none of that matters anymore, and Shepard slips the dog tags around her neck. It feels right, having them there. She’s been a true blue marine since the day she enlisted on her 18th birthday; even when she had an uneasy partnership with Cerberus, she was still always Alliance at heart.

“You know what you have to do,” Anderson says, his voice quieter now, and Shepard nods, trying to quell the tears rising in her eyes, trying not to think of this as a goodbye.

“I do. I _will_ be back for you, and I’ll bring every fleet I can.” She starts to turn, not wanting Anderson to see her watery eyes, but she pauses. “Good luck.”

Anderson nods. “You too, Shepard.”

It hurts to leave him there, but Shepard knows Anderson is more than capable. Over the years, he’s become more than her boss, more than even a mentor, he’s become the father figure she never knew, but desperately needed.

When Shepard was a new recruit, scared and vulnerable and filled with anger, Anderson was there to shape her into a proper soldier, to challenge her and guide her and give her _purpose_, a way to channel her anger.

When he’d been given command of the Normandy, he’d hand-picked her as his XO, and she’d been proud to have the chance to serve under him. And when Saren and the Geth happened, when everything went to shit… he’d been a guiding force in her life.

He’d been the only one—aside from her crew, of course—to believe her about the Reapers. He’d been a steady presence in her life when she needed it the most, and she owes so much of who she is today to him. And it hurts to leave him, but she knows they each have their own role to fill in this war.

As Shepard walks up the plank and the Normandy starts to fly off, she and Kaidan make eye contact, and she holds it for a second. There’s so much in his eyes, in his expression, that’s unreadable and she doesn’t know what to make of it, of him, of anything.

Letting out a long sigh, Shepard turns to face the outside, to get one last glimpse at Earth. Because it’s not just her mentor and father figure she’s leaving behind, but her _home_. Funny how when she was younger, she wanted nothing more than to escape Earth, to leave and never look back, and now she can barely stand leaving.

Everything around them is on fire. Buildings are falling, explosions are rocking the landscape, people are crying. Alliance marines are trying to herd civilians into shuttles, to get them away from the carnage, but Shepard knows it’s not enough.

Soon, there will be nowhere to flee to. Soon, everything will be _this_.

Out of the corner of her eye, Shepard spies the boy from earlier, staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed at a Reaper as it fires up its attack. An Alliance marine helps him into a waiting shuttle while another fires at the Reaper, but Shepard knows it will be ineffective, it _is_ ineffective.

_No. Please_. She knows that countless children will die, are dying, have died, that one won’t make a difference, and that even if the Reaper hits a different target, it will likely result in many deaths. But that boy, that boy with the scared, angry eyes, the boy that reminds her of herself when she was scared and angry growing up in the slums of NYC… just not him.

The shuttle takes off and the Reaper’s eye follows it, the laser cutting it in two, and then the other one in front of it. As they explode and the debris falls down on the ground, Shepard can’t help but cry out.

She prays that this, too, is an illusion, but this time when she closes her eyes and opens them again, all the destruction and chaos and death is still there. Next to her, Kaidan remains stoic, and she envies him his composure. How can he stay so calm when she’s falling apart? It’s infuriating, but whether she’s mad at him for not showing emotion, or herself for being _too_ emotional, she’s not sure.

Shaking it off, she turns to enter the Normandy proper as the airlock closes and Joker starts to take off. She’s furious, she’s heartbroken, she’s a bundle of pain and raw edges being held together by nothing but sheer determination, but none of that matters right now.

Right now, she has a galaxy to save. She has another council to convince and entire nations to sway to her side. She just hopes it’s enough to stop the Reapers, enough to survive.

She hopes that _she’s_ enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed, and I'd love to hear your thoughts! Kaidan and Lily Shepard have finally reuinted... sort of. There will be plenty of interaction between them in the next chapter, as they sloooowly start to work things out.


	3. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Apologies for the long delay in update, I had the first 1/3 of this written ages ago, but then school kept me busy. I hope everyone is staying safe and sane during these stressful times, take care of yourselves.
> 
> Beta'd by h34rt1lly. I hope you enjoy!

After stopping briefly by the med-bay to grab some medi-gel for her arm, Shepard makes her way down to the cargo hold, her pace quick and her expression determined. Vega is right on her heels, and while she can understand his desire to be kept in the loop, she doesn’t want to field all his questions right now— doesn’t know _how_ to field them.

“What the hell’s going on?” he’s asking her as he jogs to keep up. “Where’s Anderson? Where are we going?”

Shepard doesn’t answer, just continues moving forward. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time. Walk towards the armory, grab her old gear, suit up. Then maybe she’ll start to feel a little more capable.

“Hey!” James yells. “Answer me!”

“We’re leaving,” Shepard says, sparing a brief glance over her shoulder at James.

Kaidan’s already in the armory, checking the sights on his gun, and he looks up when James yells, but doesn’t say anything.

“Leaving? Leaving _where_? And where the fuck is Anderson?” James asks again.

“Anderson wants us to go to the Citadel,” Shepard says, taking a deep breath to calm her emotions. “Rally the other Citadel races, get their support for the coming war.”

“Bullshit,” James says, crossing his arms. “Anderson wouldn’t order us to leave.”

Shepard bristles at his tone and has to remind himself that he’s just as scared as she is, but she’s his _commander_, damnit, and the last thing she needs right now is someone questioning her decisions, because it’s taking every ounce of strength she has to leave Earth.

“Do you think I like it, either?” she says, her voice a quiet contrast to James’ brashness. “But we don’t have a choice. If we don’t get help, this war’s already lost before it’s begun.”

“Forget it,” James scoffs. “Drop me off someplace, then, ‘cause I’m not leaving. I refuse to abandon Earth.”

“Enough!” Shepard yells, all her anger and frustration having finally reached a boiling point. “Don’t you think I’d rather stay and fight, too? Earth is my _home_, Vega, this is just as personal for me as it is for you, so don’t you think for a second that I’m abandoning this fight or making this decision lightly.”

She pauses, her chest heaving with her ragged breaths from her emotional outburst, while Kaidan remains silent, ever unreadable, and James just looks angry. “We are going to the Citadel. If you want out, you can catch a ride back from there.”

“Commander!” the voice comes over the ship’s intercom, and Shepard smiles slightly.

“Joker, is that you?”

“Alive and kicking, Commander,” he says. “Well, metaphorically speaking, because… you know… brittle bones. Anyways, I’ve got an emergency transmission from Admiral Hackett coming in for you.”

Shepard breathes a sigh of relief. No one had heard from Hackett, they weren’t sure what his status was, and Shepard feared the worst. The fifth fleet Admiral was an incredibly capable soldier and leader, but he was still just one man, and the Reapers were many.

“Patch it through.”

“Shepard.” Admiral Hackett’s voice comes through, but it’s filled with static and the video is blurry. “We’ve sustained heavy losses… force was overwhelming… no way to defeat them with conventional weapons.”

“Anderon’s already ordered me to the Citadel,” Shepard says. “We’ll rally support from the council.”

“Something more important,” Hackett says. “First… need you to go to the Alliance outpost on Mars… ‘fore we lose control of the whole system.”

Mars? Shepard wonders what might be so important there, but it’s not her place to question, and it’s _certainly_ not the time, so she just salutes. “Roger that, sir.”

“…researching the Prothean Archives, with Dr. T’Soni,” Hackett says. “… found a way to stop the Reapers… _only_ way to stop them… contact soon. Hackett out.”

Liara? Well, at least it would be nice to see her old friend again. _And _a way to stop the Reapers? It’s too tempting to think about, so she doesn’t, not allowing herself to hope this will be easy because she knows it will be anything but. “Joker, set a course for the Mars Archives.”

“Mars?” The surprise in Joker’s voice echoes the surprise that Shepard felt when Hackett mentioned it. “Roger that.”

“Why Mars?” Kaidan questions. “What does he think we’ll find there?”

“I don’t know,” Shepard says. “He said Liara’s been researching something to do with the Prothean Archives. I don’t know what, but if it helps us win this war…”

She trails off and picks up her old N7 chest plate, the one she had custom made to fit her, what seems like a lifetime ago. Back before she died, back before Cerberus resurrected her, back when she knew who she was.

Now? She’s not so sure some days. But this armor is her tether, this armor is what reminds her that despite Cerberus, despite dying, she is still Commander Shepard. Alliance Navy. N7 trained.

Somehow, the day she passed N6 training and was awarded N7 status feels like both yesterday and a million years ago. She was one of the youngest recruits to ever make it that far; god, she was so _young_ back then.

She had been so eager to prove herself, during those early years— she felt like she had to, to make up for her first 18 years of life, when she ran with gangs and petty criminals. She was going to be different; she was going to be someone _important_, someone who mattered.

During N6 training, she’d been the last to run out of oxygen. She’d been scavenging and surviving all her life, why should N7 training be any different? It was brutal and painful and the recruits were told over and over that failing wasn’t shameful, that N7 training was designed to weed out the very best of the best, and even making it through the first few ranks was impressive.

But failure had never been an option for Lily Shepard. And so, she’d pushed on, she’d fought and survived and when she graduated on Arcturus Station, she’d stood tall and proud. Finally, she was doing something with her life. Finally, she was proving that she was capable, that she was meant for this, that she _belonged_ there.

And now Arcturus Station was destroyed, and the N7 program seemed like a relic of a bygone era. But the armor in Shepard’s hands was a reminder of who she was capable of being, who she used to be, and damned if she wasn’t going down without a fight.

Whatever was on Mars, she’d be ready for it. She had to be.

“Grab your gear,” she says to Kaidan and James. They would find a way to win this war. They _had_ to.

* * *

“Commander, no one’s answering,” Joker says over comms as the dusty red planet comes into view of the shuttle. “I’ve been trying to contact them on secure channels, but no go.”

Shepard frowns. “Any signs of Reaper activity?” If the Reapers are already there, if they’re too late _again_… she doesn’t want to think about that.

“Negative.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” she mutters. “EDI, any thoughts on the matter?”

“The base appears to be online,” EDI says. “It’s possible the inhabitants were evacuated when news of Earth arrived.”

“Maybe,” Shepard says. But something about this just feels… off. Wrong, somehow. “Joker, be ready, just in case. We’ll know for sure soon enough.”

She turns back to sit down, but Kaidan’s there, and she can’t deal with that right now, so instead, she stands by the door. The sooner they can get off this shuttle, the better.

The back of the shuttle feels far too small for the two of them, but Shepard knows the issue is just being in such close proximity to _Kaidan_. Were it anyone else, it wouldn’t be a problem.

She can count on one hand the number of words he’s said to her since Horizon, and it drives her crazy. Horizon. He sends that letter, that letter which makes her feel like maybe there’s a chance for them still, maybe they can reconcile, but then nothing.

Even when it was all over, even in the six months she spent under house arrest, he’s continued to ignore her. Even though he’s known, this whole time, where she’s been. How hard would it be to at least send a letter, clear the air?

Instead, coldness radiates from him like Alchera, and she can barely stand to be in his presence without shuddering because, if she’s honest—there’s a part of her that still feels that magnetic pull towards him that she always has, but what’s the point if he keeps ignoring her?

At least if he accused her of horrible things again, the way he did on Horizon, she’d know where he stood, and she almost feels like she’d prefer that. The silence, the not knowing, was killing her.

For reasons more than personal drama, she hates that she has to bring him along for this mission. She needs to be able to trust her squad, she needs to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they have her back.

And as much as it pains her to admit it, she’s not sure she can definitively say that about Kaidan.

* * *

James lands the shuttle on the surface of the dusty planet a few minutes later and Shepard gazes out at the landscape, trying to make sense of whatever Hackett might be sending them after.

“Still no contact from the base,” he says. “But we’ve got a massive dust storm headed our way, so let’s hope we can find this thing quick.”

“Great,” Shepard mutters. “How long do we have until it hits?”

“Twenty minutes?” James guesses. “Half hour, tops. After that, it’s going to interfere with our comm transmissions and we won’t be able to keep in contact with the _Normandy_.”

“No time to waste, then,” Shepard says. “Let’s go.” Stepping out of the shuttle, she can see the dust storm on the horizon: a massive, impenetrable wall of dust and debris, impossible to see through. They’re going to have to hurry.

“Damn, that’s a big storm,” James says, letting out a low whistle. “It looks even bigger in person.”

“Fairly normal for Mars, actually,” Kaidan says. “Dust storms are a common occurrence here.”

“Well I’m glad _you’re_ so optimistic,” James says.

“The way I see it, we’ve got Reapers invading Earth, the station here is offline and we’re on some mysterious mission that’s connected to the Prothean archives—a little dust storm is the least of our worries.”

“Point taken,” James says.

The whole conversation between them is easy, pleasant, and Shepard tries not to grind her teeth in frustration. In the span of a minute, Kaidan has spoken more words to James than he has to her in months. After Horizon, after that letter which gave her a glimmer of hope, but has since gone nowhere, there’s been nothing but radio silence and a perpetual cold shoulder.

She knows that there are far, far more important things at stake than her broken heart and her hurt feelings. But damn if it doesn’t sting a little to hear Kaidan, the old Kaidan, _her_ Kaidan, making easy conversation with James.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s keep moving.”

The Martian landscape is barren, the buildings that the Alliance has built for the Archives jutting out over red rocks and brown dirt as far as the eye can see. And yet, despite its emptiness, there’s something oddly beautiful about it, in an unsettling sort of way. Maybe it’s just the fact that Shepard grew up in a crowded city, used to the constant hustle and bustle of people, but there’s something about the quiet that discomfits her. Something about it feels eerie, feels _wrong._

She hopes it’s just paranoia, but with the station down, she has a sinking suspicion that something genuinely _is_ wrong, and she prays they’re not too late to rendezvous with Liara and figure out what it is that Hackett wants them to retrieve.

The three of them move across the barren landscape in silence for several minutes, guns drawn, on the lookout for anything suspicious. It’s when Shepard drops down a ladder embedded into the side of a rock that she notices something lying next to a building, a second before James does.

“What’s that over there?” he asks.

Not some_thing_, some_one_ she realizes with a jolt of horror. A dead body.

“That’s Alliance Sergeant Reeves,” Kaidan says, his voice tight with emotion. “Looks like he didn’t put up a fight before he died. What’s going on here?”

Shepard swears softly under her breath. “We have to keep moving. If we can, I’ll let… someone know about this, so he can get a proper burial.”

The words feel like false promises on her lips, and she hates how uncertain everything is right now. The Reapers are threatening the fate of the entire _galaxy_, Sergeant Reeves was just one poor, dead soldier in what was going to be a long stream of them. If they failed, it meant total annihilation, but even if they succeeded, Shepard couldn’t imagine they’d get through it without heavy casualties. They’d already _had_ heavy casualties.

Could anyone be spared to come back to collect Sergeant Reeves’ body? Could anyone be spared to notify his next of kin, to give him a proper burial, to make sure he was honored the way every fallen soldier should be? Were his next of kin even still alive themselves?

Shuddering, Shepard tries to shake off the unease that’s settled deep down into her bones. A lot of good people were going to die in this war, and they weren’t going to be able to honor the fallen the way they should. She hates it, and she knows James and Kaidan hate it, too, but they have to move on, they have to leave poor Sergeant Reeves behind.

“Something’s definitely not right here,” James says. “What killed the Sergeant?”

“I don’t know,” Shepard says, shaking her head. “But keep a low profile until we find out, and stay on guard. We don’t know what we’ll find at the Archives.”

“Roger that,” James says. Kaidan is silent, and Shepard once again has to grit her teeth against her frustration—regardless of his feelings for her, she’s the commanding officer for this mission, how hard is it to just confirm he understands her orders?—but she has to assume his silence is an agreement.

They turn away from the fallen Sergeant Reeves and head down a long dirt path that runs adjacent to a sheer cliff face. A few shipping crates are scattered along the path, and in the distance, the circular rooms of the Archives rise over the landscape, but everything is so still, so quiet.

Until a gunshot rings out, shattering the silence.

Shepard holds up a hand and Kaidan and James pause behind her. Silently, she gestures for them to stay low and approach one of the storage crates, so they can get a better look at the situation without revealing themselves. Through the scope of her gun, Shepard can see that down the hill, there’s an armored truck, and next to it, a group of heavily armed soldiers. Kneeling on the ground before them is an unarmed soldier, Alliance by the looks of the armor. On the ground are two more dead bodies.

But who are the attackers? Swinging the scope back towards one of the armed soldiers, Shepard sees something that makes her blood run cold. A black oval with a pointed top and a break in the bottom, set on the backdrop of an orange stripe. _Cerberus_.

Before she, or anyone else—because surely James and Kaidan are seeing this, too, and _Kaidan_, god, what must he be thinking right now, what must he be thinking about _her_?—can react, the soldier Shepard had been looking at places his gun to the temple of the kneeling Alliance soldier and pulls the trigger.

“Holy shit,” James says, and Shepard feels too sick to her stomach to admonish him for talking and potentially giving away their position. “They’re executing them!”

Shepard knows that there’s protocol to follow. There’s at least five or six of the Cerberus soldiers, against Shepard, James and Kaidan. As commanding officer of the mission, Shepard needs to prioritize her own team’s safety; she needs to examine the situation, assess the risks, direct Kaidan and James appropriately, and only engage when a plan of action has been determined.

She needs to _not_ leave cover, let out a sound that is somewhere between battle cry and anguished scream, and hit the nearest soldier with the hardest warp she’s capable of producing-- which is exactly what she _does_, because she is too blinded by rage to give a damn about protocol right now.

“Well, I guess they know we’re here now,” James mutters as chaos erupts on the battlefield. There’s bullets and grenades flying, and Shepard’s body thrums with power, the adrenaline and raw biotic ability that she possesses singing in her veins, reminding her that she’s alive.

“Lay down your weapons and you won’t be hurt!” one of the soldiers calls out from behind the cover of the armored truck.

_Right_, Shepard thinks. _Because we’ve all seen the compassion you extend to unarmed Alliance soldiers_. Instead of dignifying the soldier with a response, she sends a warp around the corner of the truck and relishes the scream when he’s hit, perhaps more than she should.

Beside her, she can feel the biotics radiating from Kaidan, she can feel as he lifts one of the Cerberus soldiers into the air and she finishes him off with a warp. They used to fight like this all the time, in tandem, and it reminds her what a good team they made, back when the world was a simple place, back when Saren and his geth were the biggest threat they had to face.

The battle is over quickly, the handful of Cerberus soldiers being no match for Shepard’s rage, Kaidan’s biotics or James’ skill with assault rifles. There’s a long moment of silence after the last soldier falls, and Shepard can feel Kaidan’s accusatory eyes on her, boring into her, cold and unforgiving.

_I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I—_

“Those guys were Cerberus, weren’t they?” James asks, cutting through Shepard’s internal mantra, as if by repeating the words in her head she can make Kaidan understand.

“Sure looked like it,” Shepard says. “I’d recognize that armor anywhere.”

“Cerberus.” Kaidan spits the word out as if it disgusts him just saying it. “What are they doing on Mars?”

“Good question,” Shepard says, trying to run through the possibilities in her mind. What would Cerberus want with the Mars Archives? The last she’d seen of Cerberus was when she told the Illusive Man to go fuck himself and destroyed the Collector base. In all her time with Cerberus—not _with_ them, just using their resources, an important distinction that she has to remind herself of—she’d never known the Illusive Man to express any interest in the Archives.

Their goal was always promoting the advancement of humanity, stopping the Collectors from taking human colonies naturally fell into their ideals. But why the Archives? Why now, after the Reapers attacked? Shepard knew that the Illusive Man thought the Alliance pandered to the aliens too much, and that they weren’t invested enough in stopping the colonies from disappearing.

While Shepard disagreed, she could understand that mentality. But the Reapers weren’t just a threat to humanity, they were a threat to the whole galaxy, and if there was any hope of defeating them, the galaxy had to present a united front. Was Cerberus really so selfish that they would take something from the Archives, likely whatever Hackett sent her after, to try and save humanity above all else? That wasn’t just selfish, it was _stupid._ Humanity’s best chance at surviving was by allying with everyone else— humans, asari, turians, salarians, krogans, _everyone_ had to unite to stop the Reapers.

“You mean you don’t know?” Kaidan asks, his tone carefully guarded, and it takes Shepard a second to compose herself before she can respond.

“I’m not with them anymore, Kaidan, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says, her tone equally guarded. Two can play this game.

“It wasn’t exactly, but you have to admit it’s a bit, ah… convenient.”

Shepard reels back as if he’d slapped her. “_Convenient_?”

“You have a history with Cerberus,” Kaidan says, as if he’s pointing out the obvious. “In the past, Cerberus has always stayed out of the way of the Alliance, they’ve stuck to the Terminus Systems and planets on the edge of Alliance space. They’ve always operated on the downlow. But Mars? That’s _big_, that’s right in the heart of Alliance space. And well, you’re here, they’re here…”

“I…” Shepard opens her mouth and then closes it again. _I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I am not with Cerberus I never _was_ with Cerberus_.

“You should know me better than that,” is all she says in the end. “My… partnership, if you want to call it that, with Cerberus was a means to an end. I was never ‘with’ them, and I am most certainly not with them now.”

“Uh guys?” James cuts in. “I hate to break up this little chat, but we’ve got Reapers attacking Earth as we speak and something here Hackett wants us to find, so maybe we should… vamoose?”

“Right,” Shepard says, taking a deep breath to stabilize her emotions. “Come on, let’s go.”

She hears the slightest, almost imperceptible, sigh from Kaidan, but he doesn’t say anything else as he and James fall into line between Shepard as the three of them continue down the dirt path, guns drawn.

“Look out!” Kaidan calls out before they’ve made it far. “Cerberus soldiers up ahead, twelve o’clock.”

Shepard manages to duck behind a spare crate just as the Cerberus soldiers start firing on them. As much as she hates this whole situation, with the Reapers attacking Earth and Cerberus murdering Alliance soldiers, it feels good to be fighting again, after these past six months under house arrest.

“I thought we took care of security!” one of the Cerberus soldiers yells over the noise of gunfire and biotics. “These guys sure as hell don’t fight—or look—like scientists!”

Shepard hits him with a shockwave, knocking him out of cover and James finishes him off. One down, but still too many to go—this group is slightly larger than the last, and they have Shepard pinned down at an awkward angle.

She glances around the battlefield, noting two soldiers bearing down on her position. James and Kaidan have their hands full, so she can’t rely on them, and if the Cerberus soldiers have any brains at all, they’ll divide up and flank her. Which means she needs to act now.

Slipping out from cover, she hits the soldiers with a singularity, then follows it up with a warp, the detonation making a satisfying _thwack_ as the Cerberus troopers are killed. There’s another soldier approaching her head on, and she just smirks to herself. They could at least _try _to make it challenging. Charging her head on? They should know better than that. She uses her biotics to pull the soldier towards her, then throws him back against one of the armored tanks with bone-crushing force.

It feels good, she feels _powerful, _but before she can revel in her victory too much, Kaidan’s panicked voice calls out.

“Commander, look out!”

Shepard turns in time to see that while she’d been toying with the troopers in front of her, another one had been sneaking up behind her. He starts firing before she has time to react, before she has time to dive for cover, and the assault rifle rips through her shields in no time. She realizes with a sudden panic that she’s expended too much biotic energy, and can’t access her abilities right now; can’t throw out a shockwave to knock the soldier over or a singularity to pin him in place, can’t even put up a barrier to block the projectiles.

But before any real damage can be done, Kaidan is there in front of her, throwing up a barrier to shield them both. Once they’re both safely guarded, he lets out a growl of frustration and throws out a mass effect, Shepard watches as the soldier arches back in pain and a swirl of purple energy surrounds Kaidan, the very life force of the Cerberus trooper slowly being drained out.

_Reave_. Since when did Kaidan know how to reave?

Shaking off both the shock of seeing Kaidan wield such a powerful biotic ability and the shock of the Cerberus soldier nearly getting the drop on her, Shepard takes a step back from Kaidan, suddenly angry that he stepped in.

“I’m perfectly capable of using barriers myself,” she snaps. “I had the situation under control.”

If Kaidan is shocked by her angry tone, he hides it well. “Yeah, it sure looked under control. Why _didn’t_ you use a barrier, then?”

Shepard scowls, not wanting to admit that she had been reckless and ran out of biotic power. It was a rookie mistake. The first thing anyone learns with biotic training is how to pace yourself, how to make sure you always have a little in reserve, in case of an emergency. Sure, she still had her gun, but she wouldn’t have been able to incapacitate the soldier before he did considerable damage to her as well. It’s shameful, and she should know better, but she’s not about to admit that to _Kaidan_.

“I didn’t know you could reave,” she says, changing the subject. “That’s new. _Major_.”

“It’s, uh, a new skill.” Kaidan has the decency to sound slightly chagrined. “Something I’ve been honing these past two years.” 

He turns to scan the battlefield, clearly uncomfortable with the topic, though whether it’s because of the secrets he’s been keeping from her, or something else, Shepard isn’t sure. 

“I think we’ve got them all,” he says.

“All clear over here,” James says, walking out from behind an armored truck. He pauses, looking around at the fallen bodies. “It doesn’t look like they came here in force. The two groups we’ve run into have both been small, there’s been what, a dozen of them altogether? If that?”

“And only a few vehicles,” Shepard says, glancing around at the armored tanks parked outside the entrance to the Archives. “How did they manage to get rid of security with so few numbers?”

“They must’ve had help from the inside,” Kaidan says, shaking his head in disgust. “The Archives are an Alliance base; this place is heavily fortified. There’s no way you could take it on with anything less than a full battalion.”

“You might be right.” Shepard glances around the battlefield one last time, then jerks her head in the direction of the entrance to the Archives. “Come on, I’m sure there’s more trouble waiting for us inside.”

They head up the ramp into the base, Shepard trying to ignore the feeling of Kaidan’s eyes on her as she taps in the command to shut the airlock and key up the elevator.

“Commander. _Shepard_. I need a straight answer.”

Shepard grits her teeth together. At least he’s finally talking to her, instead of ignoring her. At least he’s finally called her Shepard, and not Commander—or worse, _ma’am_—for the first time since Horizon, but she hates how her heart lurches at the use of her name, because she knows, she _knows_ what he’s about to say.

But she has to ask anyways, just in case. “About what?”

“Do you know anything, anything at all, about why Cerberus is here?” he asks, and the tiny glimmer of hope that Shepard was fighting dies instantly. As she thought: he’s still suspicious.

“I know, you said you’re not with them anymore,” he continues, either oblivious to or uncaring of the pain he’s causing her, the toll his distrust—him, of all people, who _knows_ her, who _understands _her—is taking on her. “But if there’s anything you’re hiding, or anything that maybe they would have mentioned back when you were with them… please, Shepard, this is important.”

“Why do you think I would know anything?” She tries to keep her voice calm, rational, but the fact that he’s practically _begging _her, as if he really thinks she knows something, but just won’t say it, is equal parts heartbreaking and infuriating and at her core, Lily Shepard is a weak woman. And so her voice wavers, just a little.

“You worked with them!” Kaidan says, his voice growing agitated as well. “More than that. God, Shepard, they… rebuilt you from the ground up. They gave you a ship, resources… they brought you back from the dead. It would be natural to feel some allegiance to them. How am I not supposed to think you might know something?”

“So, because Cerberus brought me back, you blame me for their actions and assume I must know something? Maybe I just should have stayed dead, then, is that what you’re saying?”

Deep down, she knows the words are unfair, and when Kaidan flinches, she almost regrets it. Almost.

“No, that’s not—” Kaidan breaks off with a growl of frustration.

“Let me make one thing clear,” Shepard says. “I do not work for Cerberus. I _never_ worked for them. We formed a temporary alliance to take down the Collectors, and I spent the entire time distancing myself from Cerberus’ operations as much as possible. The _Normandy_ may have flown Cerberus colors, but I ran her like an Alliance ship. The moment I had an opportunity to do so, I severed all ties with Cerberus and haven’t looked back since.”

Kaidan opens his mouth to say something, but Shepard cuts him off before he can.

“I have gladly told the Alliance everything about Cerberus operations and my ‘alliance’ with them. I have told them every single piece of even _potentially_ sensitive data that I learned during my time there.” She pauses, just briefly, just enough to catch her breath and collect herself. “I have had no contact with Cerberus since I destroyed the Collector base and told the Illusive Man exactly what I think of him. And I have no idea why they’re here today or what they want.”

James awkwardly clears his throat, and Shepard has the dignity to feel slightly embarrassed—she’d forgotten that he was still standing there, and here she and Kaidan were, airing out two years’ worth of bad blood and hurt feelings.

“Commander Shepard has been under constant surveillance since coming back to Earth,” he points out. “There’s no way she’s been communicating with Cerberus, Alliance brass would have noticed and stopped her before she could have so much as sent a comm.”

“I guess that’s right,” Kaidan says. “Sorry, Shepard, it’s just—”

Whatever he’d been about to say is cut off by the hiss of air as the airlock finishes sealing. Sighing, Shepard takes off her helmet as the elevator starts to rumble and slowly lifts up.

“I shouldn’t have to explain myself to you, Kaidan,” she says softly as the elevator comes to a stop and they step off. “You, of all people, you should… please, just trust me.”

“I want to,” he says. “I _do_ trust you, it’s just… I only meant…”

His words are cut off once again, this time by a loud banging coming from the air vents above. Shepard snaps out of the conversation, ducking behind the cover of an armored tank and drawing her gun in one smooth motion. In an instant, she goes from Lily, ghost in the shape of a woman, airing out her personal drama at inopportune times, to Commander Shepard, Alliance soldier in charge of an important mission.

“Stay on guard,” she mouths to James and Kaidan, who have taken cover next to her. Her eyes trace the sound coming from the vents, keeping her gun aimed at the source, as the noise from whoever is inside travels across the length of the room. After a moment, the grate that leads to the vent is kicked open from the inside, and a familiar asari drops down onto the ledge below it.

_Liara_. Shepard breathes a small sigh of relief to see her old friend alive— though if she didn’t already have enough reasons to hate Cerberus, seeing two soldiers drop out behind Liara, guns aimed at her, certainly fuels the fire. Liara takes care of them before Shepard can react, hitting them with a singularity, before emptying a clip into their helpless, floating bodies.

At times, it’s still hard to reconcile this Liara, the one who worked as a powerful information broker on Illium, the one who showed no mercy when taking down the Shadow Broker, with the charmingly awkward scientist Shepard first met back on Therum. Then again, Shepard knows she’s vastly different from who she used to be back then, too—this war has changed them all. Hardened them. They’ve had to adapt, because it’s either that or be killed.

Still, when Liara keeps shooting at the soldiers, even when it’s clear they’re dead, Shepard pauses for just a moment, and it’s only once Liara has holstered her gun that Shepard stands up out of cover, not wanting to spook the asari.

James, clearly on edge, keeps his gun up as he follows, and Shepard can’t help but chuckle slightly as she puts a hand on it. Sure, Liara’s changed a bit since she and Shepard first met, but there’s no way she’d ever be a threat to Shepard.

“Easy there, lieutenant,” Shepard says. “She’s with us.”

Liara turns around as Shepard approaches, a slight smile on her lips when recognition hits. “Shepard. Thank the goddess you’re alive.”

“Same could be said about you,” Shepard says, pulling her old friend into a brief hug. “When we saw the situation out there, I was worried.”

“Please, I can handle a few Cerberus operatives,” Liara says, brushing off the concern. “I saw the reports as they came in, I worried you wouldn’t be able to make it out. They hit Earth hard?”

“Yeah, it was hard leaving like that,” Kaidan says. Shepard’s taken aback for a moment before she remembers that of course Kaidan and Liara both served on the original _Normandy_, and they’re friends, too, and Kaidan has every right to be involved in this conversation.

“Kaidan. I’m so sorry,” Liara says. “I’m relieved to see both you and the Commander made it out alive, but… why did you come here? Shouldn’t you be out there fighting?”

“Hackett ordered us to come,” Shepard says. “He said you’ve been researching, that you’ve found something that could help us, and you’d know what to do.”

Liara smiles again, this time slightly broader. “I do. Follow me.”

“Hallelujah,” James mutters. “Finally, some goddamn fucking answers.”

“Maybe,” Liara corrects. “I discovered plans for an old Prothean device, one that I think could wipe out the Reapers. Nothing is definite yet, but… Shepard, this looks promising.”

Shepard pauses for a second, trying to absorb this new information. Could they really have a plan? An actual _plan_ for defeating the Reapers?

“Here? On Mars?” she asks, needing more information before she allows herself to get her hopes up. “We’ve known about the Prothean Archives for decades now. Why is this only surfacing now?”

“The Archives are a massive place,” Liara says. “And up until recently, no one believed you about the Reapers anyways. But now… finding it was process of elimination, mostly, mixed with a little desperation. We’re out of time.”

“Indeed we are,” Shepard says quietly, thinking about the horrific scenes from Earth. Had that really only been that morning? It felt like eons ago that the Reapers had invaded Earth, eons since that child she couldn’t save, and Anderson ordering her to abandon the fight, to abandon Earth.

“You bought us time when you destroyed the Alpha Relay, but we all knew that was just a temporary measure,” Liara says, looking out the window with a longing sigh. “Since you were under investigation, I knew I had to do something. Thankfully, Hackett agreed, he asked me to use my Shadow Broker resources to find something to stop the Reapers.”

She turns away from the window with a slightly sad smile. “My research led me here and has kept me so busy. I meant to come visit you, but…”

Shepard waves off Liara’s concern. “It’s fine. You had more important things to do, and besides, I was under house arrest. Your occasional messages were welcome, it meant a lot having a friend check in with me from time to time.”

_Unlike some people_. The words hang there, unsaid, and she can’t help but sneak a glance at Kaidan. Kaidan, who sent her a heartfelt message after Horizon, Kaidan who gave her hope. Kaidan, who ignored her and never called or visited and Kaidan, who continues to doubt her and question her and accuse her of working with the enemy.

_Not like Jacob ever messaged, either_, she thinks, but she can’t think about that right now. She has a long history of being disappointed by important men in her life, maybe it’s time to move on and focus on the present. Focus on something tangible, like the Reaper threat. The war might be a lost cause, but at least it’s a distraction from the lost cause that is her love life and she almost, _almost_ chuckles.

“This Prothean weapon,” Shepard says, turning back to face Liara. “What is it? How do we find it and use it?”

“It’s not a weapon,” Liara says. “At least… not yet. It’s a blueprint for a device, but I believe it can stop the Reapers. The Protheans came close to defeating the Reapers. They had plans, they had this device, they just ran out of time. But I believe we can use their blueprint to finish what they started.”

“It seems too good to believe,” Shepard admits. “But I hope you’re right. How do we get to where it’s stored?”

“The Archives are across that tramway.” Liara points out the window at the long, covered passage that connects the part of the base they are in with the research section of the Archives.

“Assuming Cerberus hasn’t shut it down,” she adds, her eyes flashing with anger.

“Yeah Cerberus seemed hell bent on catching you,” James says. “What are they after?”

“They’re after the same thing we’re all after,” Liara says. “The blueprint.”

Shepard curses under her breath. “I didn’t think they’d be _this_ selfish, but if it’s something powerful enough to destroy the Reapers…”

“Then it might just be of interest to Cerberus,” Kaidan finishes, shaking his head in disgust.

Before Shepard can say anything else, there’s a loud _boom_ that comes from the other side of the door on the far side of the room. Shortly after, sparks start flying as someone on the other side of the door—Cerberus, no doubt—does their best to override the seal and manually force the door open.

“Looks like it’s a race to the Archives, then,” James says, cracking his neck. “Bring it on.”

Shepard pauses for a second, analyzing the situation. If she, James, Kaidan and Liara all go on foot to the Archives, then they’re all shit out of luck if Cerberus beats them and escapes with the data. They need backup.

“Not so fast, James,” she says. “I need you to get back to the shuttle.”

“But—” James starts to protest.

“If Cerberus beats us to the Archives, I need you covering the exits. We can’t let them get their hands on this blueprint.” Shepard dashes over to the console, queueing up the elevator for James. She needs Liara to lead the way to where the blueprint is, and as tempting as it is to send Kaidan away instead of James, James is the better shuttle pilot, and Kaidan’s technical skill could be useful if they run into trouble on the ground.

“That’s an order, Lieutenant!” she yells when James doesn’t move.

“Roger that.” James’ voice doesn’t hold the enthusiasm it did when talking about racing Cerberus to the Archives, but he complies nonetheless.

“I can hear them coming,” Kaidan says, glancing over to the door, which has nearly been soldered open. “We should take cover.”

Letting her biotics flare out around her, Shepard ducks behind one of the large crates in the cargo bay, her body thrumming with energy. The fight has only just begun, and it will be a challenge to beat Cerberus when they’re outnumbered and outgunned.

But being outnumbered and outgunned has never stopped Lily Shepard in the past. She’s a Commander in the Alliance Navy, she’s an N7, and she’s going to stop Cerberus and win this war, no matter what it takes.

When the Cerberus soldiers finally burst into the room, she’s ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always appreciated, I'd love to hear that you think!


	4. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kaidan and Shepard finally start talking... but there's still a long ways to go to heal the rift, and Cerberus keeps giving everyone trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay... again. I have far too many stories I'm working on, and clearly my time mangagement skills aren't what they should be. But today's chapter is a long one, so I hope that helps make up for it! Many thanks to everyone who has commented and left kudos, the feedback always put a smile on my face.
> 
> And many thanks to h34rt1lly for her tireless beta work.

When the Cerberus soldiers breach the doors and start firing, Lily Shepard leaps into action. Amidst the fighting, Kaidan can’t help but glance over at her, can’t help but watch her fight, watch _her_— take it all in, take in what he thought he’d lost forever. There’s a beauty in the way she moves, the way she fights, all biotic energy and explosions and rage. He’d always known she was a powerful biotic, back in their days on the _Normandy SR-1_, he’d seen her skill firsthand, numerous times.

But whatever Cerberus had done to her, it had clearly amplified her biotic power—she’s on the level of Liara now, despite being only human. He watches as she catches groups in a singularity, then hits them with a warp a moment later, the explosion scattering the dead soldiers. There’s a beauty in it that takes his breath away, but at the same time, makes him want to take a step back. Because he knows that she is powerful, she is _dangerous_, and what he doesn’t know is what side she’s on. He prays to everything he believes in that she’s still Commander Shepard, that she’s still _Lily_, the woman he knew, the woman he loved. Loves, maybe, he isn’t sure, because that old wound has barely scabbed over and he worries that if he starts to pick at it, he won’t be able to stop. And if it turns out she’s not who she says she is, he thinks it might break him, and he isn’t sure if he’d be able to put himself back together.

He’s so wrapped up in his thoughts, wrapped up in _her_, that he almost misses when she lets out a growl of frustration and hits the remaining Cerberus soldiers with a ball of pure biotic energy, so big and bright that he has to shield his eyes from the blast. After, there’s a moment of silence, as everyone checks to make sure no one else is lying in wait.

He’s the first to break the silence. “I didn’t know you could flare your biotics like that.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t know you could reave, _Major_,” she snaps back.

He winces slightly at the venom in her tone, but he knows he has no right to criticize. He wants to tell her that when he was first promoted to Major, she was the first person he wanted to tell. He knew she’d be so proud of him; after all, his experience serving under her command on the _Normandy_ was a huge reason for his promotion. When he was promoted, his first thought was _I have to tell Lily_ but then a second later he remembered that she’d _died_ and had been brought back by Cerberus, of all people, and everything was changed, and it was too much and he just… couldn’t.

He wants to tell her how sorry he is for his words on Horizon, how when he first saw her, he was scared of believing his eyes— scared that it was just an illusion and she would fade away, again, leaving him alone, _again_. And that the fear, combined with the shock of hearing that she was with Cerberus, led him to say things he never meant to.

He wishes he could tell her how after that letter, he wrote hundreds more that he never sent, because he was scared of being hurt again. He wishes he could tell her that after she was put on house arrest by the Alliance, he thought about visiting countless times, but every single time, his fear stopped him. _What if she wasn’t real? What if she was still with Cerberus? What if she—rightfully, after his words on Horizon—hated him and wanted nothing to do with him?_

There are a thousand things that he wants to tell her, but they all seem like too much and too little all at once, and so he stays silent.

“All clear,” Liara says, cutting through the silence between Kaidan and Lily that is steadily growing increasingly awkward. “We need to keep moving.”

The elevator to the upper level is broken, but after a few minutes of searching for options, Shepard calls out.

“Over here! The vehicle lift is still working.”

He watches as she pulls herself onto a pile of crates, then takes a running leap, landing gracefully on top of the vehicle lift. Her ingenuity was always one of the things he admired most about her—it didn’t matter what kind of hopeless situation you put her in, Lily Shepard would find a way out of it.

It's nice to know that at least some things never change.

The three of them are quiet as they make their way across the upper level to a closed door at the back. Shepard holds up a hand and Kaidan and Liara pause behind her as she punches in the code for the door. Cerberus hasn’t bothered to override the lock, so the door opens easily, but before anyone can take more than a step into the room, a shot rings out, hitting a fleeing Alliance soldier in the back.

The body drops to the floor just a few feet in front of them, and Kaidan tightens his grip on his gun. He’s always known Cerberus was bad news, but this? This takes it further than even he thought they were capable of.

Shepard jerks her head to either side of the door, indicating to Kaidan and Liara to take cover in the archway, while she creeps forward, keeping low and out of sight of the Cerberus troopers.

Even from the door, Kaidan can hears the Cerberus soldiers’ casual conversation.

“I heard there are still some scientists putting up a fight in the vehicle bay,” one says.

“Yeah, it’s becoming a real nuisance,” another says. “Come on, let’s go get ‘em and finish this pest control.”

Kaidan’s not one to disobey orders, he knows that moving from cover would jeopardize not just him, but Liara and Shepard. He learned the hard way what recklessness can cost, back in BAaT, and he didn’t make Major without a respect for orders and rules.

But damn if it isn’t tempting to just step out and empty a clip into the Cerberus soldiers, right then and there, without waiting for the tactical advantage. Innocent Alliance marines and scientists are being slaughtered. And not even by the Reapers, or other hostile aliens, but by _Cerberus_. It sickens him.

Thankfully, before he has a chance to be tempted too much by his desire to put an end to the Cerberus soldiers who are openly bragging about murder, Shepard grabs one of the soldiers from behind and slams him down on the ground with a blast of biotics, killing him instantly.

The other three Cerberus troopers open fire on Shepard, and Kaidan and Liara step out from cover, finishing them off easily.

“Come on, let’s keep moving,” Shepard says, stepping over the body of one of the fallen Cerberus soldiers.

“The control center is right up ahead, we should be able to access the controls to the pedway from there,” Liara says.

The three of them continue on through the door at the back of the room and the control center lies a few yards ahead. It’s been trashed, with broken glass everywhere, important files scattered on the ground, and more than one dead Alliance personnel.

_This is what Cerberus has done to an Alliance base_, Kaidan reminds himself. For all of their claims to be pro-human, for all of their claims that they put the needs of humanity first, it didn’t stop them from slaughtering a whole Alliance base, and it sickens him and angers him in equal parts.

_How could Shepard have joined up with them?_

There it is, that lingering question that he can’t move past. He knows they had this conversation on Horizon, he’s seen the hurt in her eyes when he questions if she’s still with him, when he doubts her. And it kills him to keep pressing the issue, but he has to. This might be further than Cerberus has ever gone before, but the potential has been there all along, from the moment they discovered Cerberus murdered Admiral Kahoku to cover up the inhumane tests they’d been performing.

Back then, Shepard had condemned Cerberus, she’d vowed to take them down, to avenge the Admiral and the squad of marines lured into the thresher maw nest. How could she have seen that, and then joined up with Cerberus only two years later? The Shepard he knew never would have joined with Cerberus, and that’s what makes him doubt that it’s not really _his_ Shepard standing here right now. She looks the same, her voice is the same, god, she even smells the same—that intoxicating floral scent from her shampoo, mixed with the fire and grit of the battlefield. But is it really her, deep down?

She should have gone to the Alliance. She should have gone to _him_, told him she was okay, she was alive. She should have done anything but join Cerberus. Would she have ever told him she was alive if he hadn’t run into her on Horizon? Would he have had to listen to the rumors and reports, forever wondering if it was really true?

But dwelling on the past is useless, and there are lives at stake—potentially every life in the galaxy—so Kaidan tries to shake off these thoughts, just as Liara curses softly.

“Damn it, security’s been tampered with,” she says. “Everything’s all scrambled.”

“Let me see if I can access the controls,” Shepard says. “Kaidan, keep an eye on our six.”

“Roger that.” He keeps his gun at the ready and his biotics fully charged, almost hoping Cerberus would dare to try and confront them right now. As he’s sweeping the perimeter, his gaze catches on a woman in the security feed. She runs into the frame, looks directly at the camera, types something into a console, and then runs back out again.

Technically speaking, she hasn’t done anything wrong, but something about her just seems… off.

“Pause the vid,” Kaidan says. “Who’s that woman who just ran into the frame?”

“That’s Dr. Eva Coré,” Liara says. “I don’t know much about her, she only arrived about a week ago.”

“Hmm,” is all Kaidan says. Could she be the Cerberus mole who gave them easy access to the facility? Is she the traitor responsible for all the deaths?

“Any luck with the pedway?” Liara asks Shepard, but Shepard shakes her head.

“Everything’s all locked down. It will take longer than we have to hack into the controls and get it open again.”

Liara thinks for a moment, tapping her chin. “I saw some construction nearby earlier; I think we can gain access to the roof. Once there, we can figure out a way to the Archives.”

Shepard nods. “Let’s move. Helmets on.”

The three of them pause just long enough to secure their helmets and ensure oxygen is flowing as it should, and then it’s out through the airlock. Out on the horizon, the storm has gotten closer, the dust completely concealing everything it rolls over, punctuated by occasional flashes of lightning.

“We’d better hurry,” he says. “That storm’s getting close.”

Shepard drops down a ladder to a lower section of the roof and Kaidan follows, pausing briefly to look up as he hears the sound of gunfire. They can see the pedway from where they are and there are two trams, one in hot pursuit of the other, keeping up sustained fire on the front tram.

“Looks like the Alliance is still putting up a fight,” Shepard says, and he can practically hear the grin in her voice.

“That’s the pedway to the Archives,” Liara says. “Once Cerberus is across, they’re at the final security checkpoint. After that, there won’t be anything to stop them.”

“_We’ll_ stop them,” Shepard says, and Kaidan wishes he could trust the conviction in her voice, but he can’t. Not fully.

They’re halfway across the roof, on their way to another ladder, when James patches into their comms, his voice filled with static and barely legible.

“Commander. Do you read me?”

“Barely,” Shepard says. “The storm’s causing interference, you’re breaking up.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” James said. “I’ve lost contact with the Normandy, what’s your—” The static takes over, cutting off whatever James had been about to say.

“I didn’t read that, James,” Shepard shouts over the noise of the storm. “Repeat?”

There’s nothing but static over the comms and Shepard curses.

“The storm’s going to be here very soon,” Liara says, a tinge of worry in her voice.

“I think it’s already here,” Shepard responds. “We’re cut off from James, and he’s cut off from the _Normandy_. I think we’re on our own.”

“We can still do this,” Liara says.

A moment later they come across an open airlock, and the three of them exchange a worried look.

“This airlock shouldn’t be open,” Liara says, voicing all of their fears.

“It doesn’t look like it was forced open,” Kaidan says. “No signs of damage.”

“I don’t think you would be able to force it open,” Liara says. “It’s heavily reinforced. You’d have to override security protocols.”

“Come on,” Shepard says, stepping through the open airlock into the building. “Stay alert.”

They head down the ramp, and it isn’t long before the flashlights from their guns come across the dead body of an Alliance scientist, lying on the ground in front of them.

“Someone vented the air from the room while they were still in here,” Liara says slowly, her voice filled with horror.

Kaidan isn’t sure he can respond, he’s too consumed by his blinding rage at what Cerberus done, but after a moment, he gets the words out, noticing the bloodied hands of the scientist. “Looks like they died trying to claw their way out.”

“This is brutal, even by Cerberus standards,” Liara says, her voice a cold, quiet rage.

Kaidan sneaks a glance over to Shepard, but her expression is unreadable through her helmet, and she doesn’t say anything.

“We have to keep moving,” Shepard says. No comment on the act of atrocity that Cerberus has committed right in front of them. No words of sorrow for the fallen Alliance scientists. Just business. Kaidan knows that they have to keep moving, that if they don’t stop Cerberus in time, none of this will matter, and that stopping to reflect on the dead wastes precious time that they don’t have. But he can’t help the thought at the back of his mind: does she even care? Does she feel anything?

He knows it’s not fair, but he can’t stop himself from thinking it anyways. It’s been a few hours since they were first thrown together, since the Reaper invasion officially started, and she’s been so _cold_. So distant. Back when they served together on the Normandy, all those eons ago—how had it only been three years?—one of the things he’d most admired about her was her heart and her compassion. He wasn’t sure he knew her anymore.

Cerberus might have brought back Commander Shepard, Hero of the Blitz, Savior of the Citadel, but did they bring back Lily? He’s not so sure and that’s what kills him. He needs to know if she’s still Lily— _his_ Lily, the Lily who he fell in love with because she was as tender and gentle as she was fierce and tough. He needs to know if she’s still the same Lily who would hum opera under her breath when she thought no one was listening, the Lily who chewed on her lower lip when she was concentrating hard, the Lily who drank her coffee black and her whiskey neat, never one for frills. The Lily who would sometimes fall asleep at her desk—she’d stay up late finishing reports, and he’d find her there, cheek pressed against a datapad, blonde hair frizzing around her face as it escaped her neat bun.

All the little details that made her who she was, and made him love her—are they still there? Or did Cerberus only care about bringing back Commander Shepard, hero of the galaxy, with no care for the woman she was outside of that? And if she wasn’t still Lily, what else was different? She’d _died_. Full stop. He watched her go down with the Normandy, he mourned her death for two years. How do you come back from that? If there is one constant in the universe, it’s that there’s no escaping death. Death comes for everyone eventually, and it is always a finality.

Or so he thought. He thought he’d never get over her death, there is no ‘getting over’ losing the love of your life. And now that she’s back, it should be easier, but it just complicates everything and makes it _harder_ and he hates it. He misses her, he loves her, he hates that she’s with Cerberus. He hates himself for surviving instead of her, he hates her for abandoning him. He doesn’t trust her and yet there’s no one he’s ever trusted more in his life.

Everything is complicated and he hates how what had once been so easy—loving her—has now become so tangled. He wishes he could trust her and believe her; he wishes they could rekindle what they had, but he can’t. He doesn’t know how death changed her—because it had to have changed her, right? And what’s killing him is the not knowing; the worry that it isn’t really her, that _his_ Lily died, and this is someone else, someone irrevocably different who will never fill the void that _she_ left.

He doesn’t know what to believe or how to feel, whether to trust her and risk being hurt again if she’s not really _her_, or keep her at arm’s length and risk alienating her further. All he knows is that his heart hurts, being so close to her, yet still so far away.

* * *

Shepard, Kaidan and Liara continue on in silence, past another group of Cerberus soldiers that they quickly take care of, past more dead bodies of innocent Alliance scientists, brutally murdered by Cerberus.

And for what? Shepard never trusted the Illusive Man, she kept him at arm’s length, and the moment she had an opportunity to cut ties, she did so, in the biggest fuck you she could manage. But throughout her whole time working with them—_with_, not for, she reminds herself, as if Kaidan could overhear her thoughts—she’d never known the Illusive Man to be this brutal. Especially not when humans were involved. What could Cerberus possibly gain for humanity by stealing the plans for some Prothean super-weapon and sabotaging the war against the Reapers? The Reapers were going to wipe out everyone, humans very much included, unless they stood as a united front.

Kaidan is the one to break the silence. “Did… did you know any of these people, Liara?”

Liara. Of course he was talking to her, not to Shepard. He still hasn’t said anything to her, unless it’s to accuse her of still being loyal to Cerberus, or implying that she’d somehow known about this attack, because apparently that’s what he thought she was now. A ruthless terrorist, hellbent on ruining the one possible chance at winning this war. She can’t even comprehend why Cerberus is doing this, why would _she_ be involved?

“I… recognize a few,” Liara says. “But I didn’t know any of them well. I think, since I was the only asari here, it made things a little awkward. People were never unkind, but most of them had limited experience with aliens and I don’t think they knew how to interact with me. So, I spent most of my time alone, researching.”

“Did your research turn up anything useful?” Kaidan asks. “This Prothean super-weapon, how did you find it?”

“I was researching the Protheans,” Liara said. “After Ilos… I had so many questions, there was so much more that I needed to learn, now that we had that missing piece of the puzzle. It took the Reapers centuries to fully conquer the Protheans. During that time, a handful of Prothean survivors worked desperately to find a way to stop the Reapers. If my translations are correct, I believe they found a way to stop them. But in the end, they didn’t have enough resources to see the plan come to fruition. That’s what we need to change.”

Kaidan falls silent, contemplative, as the three of them press on. Shepard finds the environmental controls for the room and re-pressurizes it, waiting for the hiss and pop of air to finish, signifying it’s safe to remove helmets.

Shepard takes a deep breath to calm her frayed nerves, largely due to the stress of the past several hours—but if she’s entirely honest, ever since she died, choking on the emptiness of space, having to rely on her suit for oxygen fills her with just a tinge of anxiety. She’s always known that things could go badly if her helmet was destroyed or her oxygen supply sprang a leak—everyone knows that, it’s one of the risks you have to deal with.

But now that she’s actually experienced it, firsthand… it’s hard to fully trust the mechanics of her suit. It’s hard to calm her breaths, to keep from hyperventilating, to still the worried thoughts in her mind that question _how long until air runs out_ and _what if disaster strikes_. It’s almost shameful to admit—she’s faced down hordes of geth, she’s stopped the Collectors, she faced down an actual _Reaper_, and yet she’s scared of not being able to breathe if her suit malfunctions.

It’s something she’d never admit out loud, and certainly not in the presence of _him_, but being able to breathe unassisted is a small relief.

“This will give us access to the labs,” Liara says. “From there, it’s easy to get to the tram station to head across to the Archives.”

“Hey, you might want to check this out,” Kaidan says, fiddling with something on the console. “There’s a recording of what happened here.”

Shepard inhales sharply, feeling slightly nauseated at the thought of witnessing Cerberus murder so many people, but she turns her attention to the screen.

On screen is an Alliance security officer, looking directly into the camera. “Security station, please come in.” Pause. “Security station? We’re, uh, seeing some odd activity down here. Our security protocols just kicked in and everything’s locked down. What’s going on?”

Behind him, the doctor from earlier, Eva Coré, appears and he glances over his shoulder to address her. “Doctor, I’ll have a report for you as soon as—”

Whatever he’d been about to say is cut off as Dr. Eva shoots a scientist just on the edge of the screen, and then the security officer himself. The screen fills with static, but clears up a moment later as Dr. Eva approaches the console and begins furiously tapping in a command. A moment later, a blaring horn cuts through the air, warning that the room is being de-pressurized. Shepard can do nothing but watch with gritted teeth as everyone slowly starts to succumb to the lack of oxygen, dropping to the floor. Dead.

“Guess we know how Cerberus got in,” Shepard mutters, seething with rage. (And there’s a smaller, petty part of her that wants to turn to Kaidan and say “see? It wasn’t me!” but there are more important things to worry about, so she keeps quiet).

“I should have realized it when I first met her,” Liara says. “If I hadn’t been so single-mindedly focused on stopping the Reapers…”

Shepard is shaking her head before Liara can even finish. “Stopping the Reapers is the only thing any of us should be focused on right now. It’s not your fault.”

“But what if there’s no way to stop them?” Liara asks, voicing Shepard’s deepest fears. “What if these are our last days and we waste them, spending our time scurrying around trying to fix a problem that can’t be fixed?”

It’s something Shepard has thought about more than once. But she also knows that even if it is hopeless, she would rather spend her last few days trying to fix it, rather than give up. Once upon a time, she might have seen the appeal of making the most of whatever time they have left—spend it with Kaidan, just the two of them enjoying each other’s presence, the way they did the night before Ilos, when they weren’t sure they’d ever make it back.

But everything has changed, and now, stopping the war is the only thing that matters to her. It’s the only thing keeping her going some days. Most days, if she’s being honest with herself. It’s easier to keep going when she can put on the armor of Commander Shepard, hide behind the mask of the Savior of the Citadel and Hero of the Blitz and whatever new title they would come up with to laud her for stopping the Collectors.

It’s easier to be the great Commander Shepard than just Lily, ghost in the shape of a woman, never quite healed from her past trauma. There are some things you simply can’t heal from, and that’s something she has to make peace with, but peace has never been something she’s good at. She’s good at battle, at war, at _survival_, at succeeding despite the odds. And the odds now might be worse than she’s ever faced, and the stakes higher than ever, but she’s still going to try.

“Liara…”

“I know,” Liara says. “I shouldn’t think this way.”

“If anyone can stop the Reapers, it’s us,” Shepard reminds her. “I’m not going to lie to you and say I’m confident we can do this, because I don’t know, but damned if I’m not going to try my hardest.”

“You’re right,” Liara says, taking a deep breath. “I don’t know how you do it, Shepard. You always stay focused on the end goal, even in the worst situations.”

Shepard shrugs slightly, not sure how to admit that her focus is the only thing keeping her from falling apart most days. She _has_ to stay focused, or else she thinks she might crumble into dust and fade away.

“When the stakes are this high, I think about what I’d lose if I fail,” Shepard says. An honest answer, if not the entire truth. “And I fight to make sure I don’t lose it.”

“That’s a terrible burden,” Liara says, crossing her arms.

Despite everything, Shepard cracks a smile. “Tell me about it. But with these plans you found, I think we have a real shot at stopping them, Liara. Together.”

“Thank you,” she says. “I want to believe you. I hope you’ll prove it to me.”

Suddenly, she furrows her brows, turns to the screen, and then back to Shepard. “Shepard. That woman, Dr. Eva Coré.”

“Yeah?” Shepard says. “What about her?”

“She wasn’t wearing a helmet,” Liara says. “When she de-pressurized the room. She wasn’t wearing a helmet or an exosuit. How did she survive?”

Shepard sucks in a breath. “You’re right. Something’s not right here. Stay alert, we don’t know what else she might be capable of.”

“We should keep moving,” Kaidan says, his voice making Shepard jump slightly. He’d been so quiet, she’d almost—_almost_—forgotten he was still standing there.

Liara tapped a command into the console and a door opened across the room. “That will give us access to labs and tram station.”

“Move out,” Shepard says, unholstering her gun. She can hear Liara and Kaidan fall into step behind her as she checks the sights on her gun and flares out her biotics, just a little. The next group of Cerberus soldiers they come across will pay dearly for the crimes they committed here.

* * *

After fighting through another group of Cerberus soldiers, Shepard, Liara and Kaidan finally come to the tram access to the Archives.

“This is it,” Liara says. “Undoubtedly Cerberus will have it locked down, but hopefully we can override it at the control center. It’s right down this hall.”

The doors to the control center are sealed, and Shepard gestures for Kaidan and Liara to take cover on either side, in case there’s an ambush waiting for them, while she opens the doors.

The moment the doors open, a massive, four-barreled turret gun drops from the ceiling and begins firing, spraying bullets everywhere.

“Heads up!” Kaidan yells, slamming into Shepard as everyone ducks for cover.

“That’s an understatement,” Shepard mutters, adrenaline pumping through her veins. (And a little something else, too, an ache, a longing as she breathes in Kaidan’s musky cologne, but she pushes that thought out of her head.)

“You okay?” he asks and even though she’s been desperately wanting him to talk to her, to say something other than vitriolic comments about her loyalties, she feels her anger flare up. How dare he treat her the way he has been and then swoop in and play the hero?

“Fine,” she says. “I take it that’s the only way in?”

“It’s the only way that I know of,” Liara says. “We’ll have to find a way.”

“We can skirt around it, stay out of its sights,” Shepard says. “Be careful and don’t take stupid risks.”

“I’ll move up first,” Kaidan says, and before she can protest, tell him that as superior officer, _she_ should be going first, he’s already up and running, dodging its fire as he ducks behind cover several paces ahead.

“Don’t let it target you!” he calls back.

“No shit,” she mutters under her breath. But now is not the time for sarcastic comments, so she scopes out the room ahead as best she can, planning out which spots are safe to take cover. If she doesn’t get this perfect, she’ll die. Her armor can protect against a lot, and medi-gel helps with most wounds, but sustained fire from a gun as powerful as that will rip through her shields and armor in no time.

She sprints out from the cover of the door, dropping to the ground and rolling into the next cover, behind an overturned crate, as the gun fires above her, the bullets close enough that she can feel the heat as they narrowly miss her head, her heart pounding in her ears.

“Shit,” Kaidan says, and Shepard feels a stab of panic in her gut.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” he calls back, and she lets out a relieved sigh. He’s okay. “That was just a close call. A little _too_ close.”

She has to stay focused on the task ahead, the path that will lead her to safety. Well, relatively speaking, there’s undoubtedly more Cerberus soldiers waiting for them. But a few more sprints, a few more brushes with death, and they finally get out of range of the turret.

“We’re safe,” Liara pants, leaning against a stack of crates. “The turret can’t reach us from here.”

“Everyone still in one piece?” Shepard asks, though she can see that Kaidan and Liara are both unharmed.

There’s another door up ahead and through the adjacent window, she can see several Cerberus soldiers, lying in wait. She’s tired from everything that has happened in the past several hours— seeing Kaidan again, the Reaper invasion, fighting their way through Cerberus here, in never-ending waves of assault troopers. But her tiredness is matched in equal measure with anger—anger at Kaidan, anger at the Reapers, and plenty of anger at Cerberus. So she gathers up her strength, takes a deep breath, and pushes through to the next room.

When she looked in the window from the outside, she could see three Cerberus soldiers, though there’s undoubtedly more. She enters the room cautiously, hugging the wall, Kaidan and Liara behind her, as she creeps along slowly under the safety of cover.

“Get ready…” a Cerberus soldier says. “Hold steady.”

There’s six Cerberus soldiers that she can see, lying in wait, and potentially more hidden in cover, but it’s enough to go on for now—but now that she can see them, Cerberus can see her, too.

“Fire!” the commanding Cerberus officer yells.

The room explodes in a spray of bullets and grenades, but battle is what Shepard does well. She throws out a shockwave, knocking over three of the Cerberus soldiers right in front of her, then finishes them off with her gun before they can get up.

A well-placed singularity from Liara draws out two more Cerberus soldiers, pulling them into the swirling mass and leaving them dangling helplessly while Shepard hits them with a warp, ripping them apart.

One left.

Kaidan taps a command into his omni-tool and the Cerberus trooper’s shields fizz out, leaving him helpless as Kaidan finishes him off with a burst from his assault rifle.

The room falls into quiet once again, except for the sounds of heavy, labored breathing, and the pained moans of a dying Cerberus soldier who wasn’t quite dead yet.

Liara walks up to the soldier and fires two shots into his head, waiting until the twitching stops before she holsters her gun again, her expression cold, and Shepard is reminded again that she’s not the only one who’s changed since the Normandy went up in flames.

“Spread out, clear the room,” Shepard says, gesturing for Liara and Kaidan to head down the sides of the room while she takes the center.

It’s a small enough room, and easy to clear, so after a minute and no hidden Cerberus soldiers found, Shepard declares it safe.

“Looks like they’ve made it to the Archives,” Liara says, frowning as she checks over the security footage. “It’s completely locked down.”

“Can you override it?” Shepard asks, but Liara is already tapping away at the console, trying to shut down the lockdown order.

It doesn’t take long before she shakes her head. “The Archives are on a completely separate network. We’re locked out.”

“Well, shit,” Shepard mutters, trying to think up a Plan B.

“We might not be locked out,” Kaidan says, and Shepard can see the idea forming in his expression. “Not if we can find a short-range communicator—helmet to helmet.”

“And?” Shepard asks, crossing her arms. “What then?”

“And then we convince them that we’re on their side,” Kaidan says. “Tell them that the Alliance soldiers have been taken care of, and we need to get through.”

“That could work,” Shepard says. “Good thinking, see what you can find.”

Kaidan leaves to go find a communicator, leaving Shepard and Liara in the room.

Shepard turns to ask Liara if she has any other ideas, in case Kaidan is unsuccessful, but pauses when she sees the smirk on her friend’s face. “What?”

“The Major has become very capable,” she says. “He’s come a long way since we served together.”

“Yeah,” Shepard says softly. “He has.”

“How are you holding up?” Liara asks, then raises a hand to cut Shepard off when she opens her mouth. “Honest answer, Shepard. I’ve known you long enough to be able to tell when you’re lying.”

“It’s… hard,” Shepard admits. “Seeing the distrust in his eyes. Knowing that he thinks I’m still with Cerberus—that I ever was _with_ Cerberus, despite what I’ve told him. You weren’t there on Horizon, you didn’t hear what he said, but…”

“But?” Liara gently prompts.

“He said some unkind things,” Shepard says. “He did send an apology letter, but… I don’t know if he’ll ever fully trust me again, and that hurts. I worry he’s moved on without me.”

That, right there is the truth of the matter, which cuts deeper than she realized until voicing it out loud—everything about her is hung up on the past. She is haunted by nightmares of her death, she loses sleep over those two years she spent lying on a slab in a Cerberus lab, little more than a corpse. She clings to those blissful months with Kaidan on the Normandy, she treasures the memories of three years ago.

But so much has changed in those three years—and what if they’ve changed in ways where they’re no longer compatible? Kaidan had two years to grieve and process and move on, two years during which she was barely alive, two years she will never get back. What if he’s moved on?

Liara’s brow furrows, but before she can say anything else, Kaidan’s voice crackles over the comms.

“Commander! I think I found something. Next room over.”

Shepard walks over to the next room, finding Kaidan kneeling next to the body of a dead Cerberus soldier.

“What did you find?”

“He’s got a transmitter still intact in his helmet,” Kaidan says. “If I can just… my god.”

In his efforts to get to the transmitter, he hit the button to lower the shield of the mask. Instead of an ordinary soldier, the man underneath the helmet has glowing blue eyes and dark veins running down his face.

“He looks like a husk,” Kaidan says, backing away slowly in horror.

Shepard inhales sharply and tries to contain her own horror. “He does. Not quite, but… they’ve definitely done something to him.”

“And by ‘they’ you mean Cerberus, right?” Kaidan asks, crossing his arms, and Shepard clenches her teeth, not liking the way this conversation is headed.

“We all know Cerberus has done some terrible things in the past,” Shepard says.

“Is that what they did to you?”

Shepard reels back, the shock and hurt of the question causing her to drop her careful mask of neutrality. “How could you say that? I am _nothing_ like him, I…”

She trails off and bites her lip, hard, to contain her emotions.

“Look, Shepard, I’ve tried to just… accept it, but the truth is, I don’t know who—or what—you are, not since Cerberus… rebuilt you,” he says, tripping over the word rebuilt as if he can’t quite bring himself to say it.

“I’m still me,” she whispers.

He sighs, turning back towards the grotesque, husk-like soldier. “For all I know, you could be their puppet, controlled by the Illusive Man himself. And maybe you _think_ you’re still you, but what if that’s just what they want you to believe? Would you even know if you’re being controlled?”

“How can you just stand there and accuse me of horrible things?” she asks, ashamed of herself for the way her voice breaks. “What do I have to do to prove to you that I’m still me? Clearly stopping the Collectors wasn’t enough. Submitting myself to the judgement of Alliance brass for my actions regarding the Alpha Relay wasn’t enough. Killing every goddamn Cerberus soldier we’ve seen here hasn’t been enough.”

The words are spilling out of her mouth, faster than she can stop them, her rage and grief building with each word. “What do you want to do, dissect my brain until you’re sure there’s no control chip, then declare me innocent in death? Would that make you happy? Because you’re setting me up for a no-win situation, Kaidan. How can I prove a negative? This is starting to feel like a fucking witch hunt.”

“No, that’s not what I meant, I just…” Kaidan breaks off with a sigh. “I don’t need you to try and explain it, I don’t think I’d understand anyways. I just want—I _need_ to know, is the person I followed into hell, the woman I _loved_, is she… are you… still in there somewhere? Because it’s not just Cerberus, Shepard, you’re… different. Colder.”

“I _died_,” Shepard spits out the words. “And I can remember every second of it. And then I wake up in a lab somewhere, and I’m told it’s two years later, and I have to save the world, _again_, but Cerberus are the only people with the resources and knowledge to actually make it happen, so I make an uneasy alliance and deal with the consequences. So yeah, I’ve changed. There’s been a hell of a lot that you’ve missed, Kaidan, times when you should have been there, but you weren’t, so don’t you dare blame this all on me.”

Kaidan looks away, either ashamed or uncomfortable, she’s not quite sure which.

Shepard takes a deep breath to calm her rage. Yelling at Kaidan won’t solve anything. “I’m still me, Kaidan. Cerberus didn’t change me, or how I feel about you. I don’t know how to convince you.”

“I don’t know if you can,” Kaidan mutters.

“You always were infuriatingly stubborn,” Shepard says, both genuine tenderness and frustration in her voice. But there’s a terrorist organization to be stopped and a universe to be saved, so she drops it. “Come on, let’s see what Cerberus is up to. Maybe we’ll both get some answers.”

She grabs the transmitter from the helmet, clears her throat, then turns it on. “Hello? This is Delta Team, come in.”

There’s a pause, and for a moment, she thinks it hasn’t worked, either the transmitter is faulty, or Cerberus isn’t buying it.

But a moment later, a voice comes over the comms. “About time. Where the hell have you been?”

“Taking care of hostiles,” Shepard says. “We’re at the tram station now, all hostiles have been eliminated. We need extraction.”

“Roger that,” the voice says. “Good work, Delta Team. Echo Team will ride over and secure the station.”

“Copy that,” Shepard says, and terminates the connection.

“Think they bought it?” Kaidan asks, and Shepard shrugs.

“We’ll find out soon enough, either way. Come on, let’s get in position.”

The three of them head down to the lower level, and a moment later the tram pulls into the station. It becomes clear that the Cerberus soldiers believed Shepard’s lie, as their guard is down, and with Shepard, Liara and Kaidan flanking them, the fight is over in a matter of minutes.

Once they’re on the tram and helmets are secured, Shepard keys in the controls for the tram. Outside, the dust storm has only gotten worse, and Shepard curses under her breath.

“Let’s hope we can find the data quick, I’m not sure how much longer we’ve got before the storm cuts off everything.”

“It’s not far, the Prothean Archives are right over there, on the other side of that platform,” Liara says, pointing to a platform that’s just visible beneath the haze of the storm.

“There’s also a squad of Cerberus soldiers,” Kaidan says. “Look out!”

The tram jolts to a stop at the platform, where easily seven or eight Cerberus soldiers lie in wait. They begin firing before the tram even stops, and Shepard ducks behind the half-wall of the tram, waiting for a break in fire.

It’s all just an automatic rhythm by this point. Throw out a singularity for crowd control, detonate it with a warp to finish them off. Hit them with a shockwave to knock them off their feet, use her submachine gun to pick off strays when her biotics are cooling down.

It’s moments like these when there’s just the thrill of battle singing in her veins that she feels invincible. Like she could take them on all by herself. She’s Commander Shepard, Hero of the Blitz, Savior of the Citadel, living legend. It might be a mask she wears, but damn if she doesn’t wear it well.

But she’s not alone, and Kaidan and Liara make the fight go even faster, and soon the Cerberus troops are all dead.

“Damn, they really didn’t want us getting in here,” Kaidan mutters, stepping over the bodies of fallen Cerberus soldiers.

“It just confirms my suspicions about the value of the data,” Liara says. “Come on, the Archives are right through that door.”

The door to the Archives opens easily—Shepard was half-expecting it to be locked down, or rigged to explode, or something—and they enter with their guns drawn, ready for another Cerberus ambush, but there’s no one there.

The room is circular, with a large obelisk in the center, and otherwise empty. Shepard briefly scans the room, but if Cerberus is lying in wait somewhere, they’ve hidden well.

“Kaidan, you take the left side, Liara, with me,” she says, already taking off down the right side of the room. At the center of the platform, right in front of the obelisk, there’s multiple holograph screens, and Shepard frowns as she takes off her helmet, trying to make sense of what she’s looking at.

Before she can sort anything out, or ask Liara for her expert opinion, one of the holographs to her right shimmers, and a man comes into view, a man who she’d hoped she’d never see again.

The Illusive Man.

“Shepard,” he says, taking a drag on his ever-present cigar. “How nice to see you again.”

“Illusive Man?” Liara questions, spinning to face him as she pins her gun on him.

“You know, the Protheans really were a fascinating race,” he says, as if having a gun trained on him doesn’t bother him in the slightest—though, since he isn’t really there, Shepard supposes he doesn’t have any reason to be concerned.

“They left all this here for us to discover,” he continues. “All this research, but we’ve squandered it. We owe our discovery of mass effect technology to them, what other remarkable inventions are hiding in these data drives? The Alliance has known about these Archives for more than thirty years, and what have they done with it?”

“There’s a team of scientists stationed here all the time,” Shepard says. “Or at least there was, until you murdered them all, so I’d say the Alliance is doing a better job at uncovering Prothean secrets than you are.”

The Illusive Man shook his head. “The deaths of the scientists are regrettable, though necessary.”

“What do you want?” Shepard asks, cutting him off.

“What I’ve always wanted,” he says. “The data in these Archives holds the key to solving the Reaper threat.”

“Yes, which is exactly why the Alliance needs them,” Shepard says. “So we can destroy the Reapers and stop this war. Or are you genuinely enough of a narcissistic, self-centered megalomaniac that you think you can solve this on your own?”

“Destruction isn’t the answer,” he says, taking another drag of his cigar. “Destruction of something like this would be a shame. We can harness and control the great power that the Reapers possess, use it for our own purposes.”

“Like you’ve done with your soldiers?” Shepard asks. “I saw what you’ve done to them, you’ve turned them into monsters.”

“Hardly,” he scoffs. “They’re improved.”

“Improved?” Shepard asks, crossing her arms. “Like the way the Protheans were ‘improved’ by being turned into the Collectors? Is that your grand plan for humanity?”

“Think about it!” His eyes gleam with his thirst for power and Shepard shudders. “Think about how strong humanity could be if we controlled the Reapers!”

Shepard shakes her head. “You’re insane. Earth is under siege, and you’re hatching some half-baked scheme that will never work to try and control the Reapers?”

The Illusive Man sighs. “You’ve always been shortsighted. Too emotional. Your decision to destroy the Collector base was a great loss for us.”

“Which is exactly why I did it, and exactly why I would do it again in a heartbeat.” Shepard crosses her arms, defiance in her eyes and rage in her heart. “That base was an abomination. Hundreds of thousands of humans were murdered there, and I only wish I could have gotten to it sooner.”

“This isn’t your fight any longer, Shepard,” he says. “Realize when you’ve lost. You can’t defeat the Reapers, even with the Prothean technology.”

“Don’t count me out just yet,” she says. “I’ve done the impossible more than once before, it’s become a bit of a habit of mine. And this time, I have allies all across the galaxy. With a united front, we _can_ do this.”

“You’re naïve.” The Illusive Man shakes his head in dismay. “And wasting an incredible resource. We can dominate the Reapers, take their power for ours, raise humanity to the levels it has always been meant to achieve!”

“Not while I’m still breathing,” Shepard says. “And even then, I died once. It didn’t stick. I’ll be taking that data and using it to destroy the Reapers.”

“Your vision is pathetically limited,” he snarls. “We rebuilt you as a tool, one with a singular purpose. We gave you freedom and autonomy because we needed _you_. And despite our differences, you were relatively successful in your mission, but just like the rest of the relics in this place, your time is over.”

“That’s bold talk for an old man who gets others to do his dirty work,” Shepard says. “I’ve had enough talk. Liara, let’s move out.”

“Don’t interfere with my plans any further, Shepard,” the Illusive Man calls out. “I won’t warn you again.”

“No, _you_ shouldn’t interfere with my plans again,” she says, turning back to face him. “I killed countless Cerberus soldiers getting here, and I’ll kill countless more if it means stopping you. I should have told you this a long time ago: go to hell. I’ll send you there myself, if I ever get the chance.”

“Shepard!” Liara’s panicked voice cuts through and Shepard turns to look at the screen Liara’s hunched over.

“What is it?”

“The data,” she says. “It’s not here. It’s being erased.”

“Goodbye, Shepard.” The Illusive Man’s smirk is the final nail in the coffin, and Shepard lets out a scream, hitting the holograph with the hardest warp she’s capable of, but it passes through the projection of the Illusive Man as he flickers out of view, and hits the railing behind him.

“Damn it!” Shepard says. “How is he doing this? Can you stop him?”

“It’s local,” Liara says, shaking her head. “Someone is uploading the data, I can’t shut them out remotely.”

“Shepard! Over here!” Kaidan’s voice comes over the comms. “On the other side of the room. That doctor from earlier, Dr. Eva. She’s got the data. She’s getting away!”

Just as Kaidan relays the information, the doctor comes sprinting past Liara and Shepard, and Shepard curses, quickly securing her helmet again.

“Come on, we can’t let her get away!”

“She’s faster than she looks,” Liara huffs as the two of them break into a sprint to catch up.

Given her speed, and her ability to survive without a helmet when she sucked the oxygen out of the room, Shepard wonders if perhaps she’s not quite human, if this is another one of Cerberus’ “improvements,” like the soldier from earlier.

Dr. Eva leads them back the way they came, out of the Archives, up an emergency exit ladder to the roof, barely looking over her shoulder to shoot back at Liara and Shepard. She’s too fast for the singularity Liara throws out, she expertly dodges Shepard’s warp, and the endless spray of bullets from Shepard and Liara barely seem to put a dent in her shields.

As Dr. Eva leads them over the rooftops and down another ladder, a sinking realization hits Shepard: they’re not going to be able to catch her in time. Not without some outside help, at least.

“James, do you read me?” Shepard calls over the comms, hoping that the storm hasn’t completely knocked out their comms just yet, but there’s only static. “James? If you can hear this, Cerberus has the data, and they’re getting away. Radio the Normandy, get them down here _now_!”

The chase continues, Dr. Eva weaving a complicated path, always just out of reach, and when they climb a ladder to a different roof section, Shepard sees a Cerberus shuttle up ahead and her heart sinks. Behind her, Kaidan curses.

“Whatever you do, don’t let her get on that shuttle!” Shepard calls out, but it’s too late, _she’s_ too late, and Dr. Eva jumps onto the shuttle, the doors closing behind her before Shepard can get on as well. She empties a clip into the shuttle doors, but it’s not enough. Cerberus is about to win, and then the war will be lost.

“Damnit! James? Normandy? Is anyone out there? Stop that shuttle at all costs!”

The Cerberus shuttle starts to lift off, taking all of Shepard’s hopes for survival with it, but through the dust storm, a glimmer of hope appears—the Alliance shuttle that James brought them to Mars in, headed right towards the Cerberus shuttle.

“I got this!” James says, his voice crackly and static-filled over the comms, but audible. The Alliance shuttle rams the Cerberus one in mid-air, triggering a small explosion, but before Shepard can get too hopeful, the Cerberus shuttle starts a spinning descent into a crash landing—right where Shepard, Kaidan and Liara are standing.

“Move!” Shepard yells, diving out of the way, but the force from the crash landing still sends her flying, and she hits the ground, hard. Groaning, she picks herself up and glances around to make sure Kaidan and Liara are both okay.

Kaidan waves off the helping hand she offers as he pulls himself to his feet, and Liara looks stunned, but otherwise okay, and Shepard lets out a small sigh of relief. While James’… ingenuity is appreciated, she wishes he could have maybe given them a heads up, so they could have gotten out of the way faster.

Shepard waves James over and he lands the shuttle with a small thud—despite having just rammed another shuttle mid-air, hard enough to make it spin out of control and crash, the Alliance shuttle seems mostly unharmed, just some slight dents and scratched paint on the nose of it.

“Normandy’s en route,” he pants, as he steps out of his shuttle. “They’ll be here soon. That was… wow.”

“Wow is one word for it,” Shepard agrees, glancing over at the crashed shuttle. Liara is limping slightly and she frowns as Kaidan drapes her arm over his shoulders to help her walk. She _did _say “at all costs,” but the three of them are lucky that they got away from the crash with minimal injuries.

“We need the data,” Liara says as she limps over to Kaidan. “Hopefully the crash hasn’t compromised it.”

Before Shepard can respond, either to reassure Liara that whatever OSD Dr. Eva used is probably sturdy, or to voice her concerns to James that maybe he could have been a touch more careful, there’s a loud bang, and the door to the Cerberus shuttle flies off.

Emerging from the flames is Dr. Eva, seemingly unharmed, and as Kaidan pushes Liara away to pull out his gun and start firing, Shepard can see why—she’s not just an enhanced human, she’s a robot, and the bullets from Kaidan’s gun harmlessly bounce off of her metallic body.

In the blink of an eye, before there’s time to react, Dr. Eva sprints towards Kaidan, shoves his gun aside, and reaches out to grasp him by the helmet, lifting him into the air with one hand.

“Kaidan!” Shepard screams, running towards him and Dr. Eva, her gun drawn, but he’s between her and the doctor. If she shoots, she risks hitting him, and what good would it do anyways, if bullets bounce off of her? Shepard considers her options—singularity? No, Kaidan would be caught up in it, too. Shockwave? No, it would hit both of them. Warp? Again, no, the risk of hitting Kaidan was too great. Flare? Definitely not, the area of effect damage was too great.

Her only arsenal left is words. “Let him go. I’m the one who the Illusive Man has an issue with, I’m the one who’s in charge here.”

Dr. Eva pauses briefly, as if contemplating what to do, then adjusts her comms unit. “Orders?”

Whatever the Illusive Man says on the other side of the line isn’t something Shepard can hear, but the doctor turns and slams Kaidan against the wall of the shuttle, and a high-pitched scream pierces the air. It takes Shepard a second to realize it’s her.

“No!” With the doctor’s back now to Shepard, she starts firing, but the doctor slams Kaidan into the shuttle once more, with a sickening crunching sound, before she finally drops him and turns towards Shepard.

There’s only seconds before the doctor reaches her and she faces the same fate as Kaidan, but as Shepard takes a deep breath, time seems to slow and her senses come alive—she can smell the acrid smoke in the air, she can feel the weight of the guns in her hands, but above all, she can feel her biotics, crackling through her veins. She can feel how much power she has.

She drops her gun, the bullets clearly ineffective, and hits the doctor with a shockwave and she stumbles, but it’s not enough. This time, when Shepard unleashes a warp that hits the doctor right in her chest, she knows—this pathetic construction by the Illusive Man is no match for Shepard.

She just hopes it isn’t too late.

Once Shepard is sure that the doctor is dead—or whatever passes for dead with robots—she runs over to Kaidan, who’s lying too still and quiet on the ground, and _please, don’t let him be dead_, she thinks. Not after all this, not after all they’ve been through. Not when their last conversation was an argument.

“Grab that thing and bring it with us,” Shepard shouts to James over her shoulder, gesturing at the body of the doctor. Maybe it will give them some insight into what Cerberus has been doing, how they’ve been achieving these “improvements” and how they managed to build an AI that looks human.

“Shepard, we’ve got Reaper signatures inbound,” Joker calls over comms, his voice panicked.

“Great,” Shepard mutters. “Could this day get any fucking worse?”

She hoists Kaidan up over her shoulder, relieved to see that he’s still breathing, though his breaths are shallow. He needs medi-gel—he needs more than medi-gel, but medi-gel will at least help as a stopgap measure—but Dr. Eva had him by the head, so she can’t properly apply medi-gel until she takes his helmet off, and she can’t do that until they’re onboard the Normandy and have a breathable atmosphere.

“Hang on, Kaidan,” she whispers. “Please.”

* * *

Once they’re onboard the Normandy, Shepard rushes Kaidan over to the medical bay where she carefully pries off his helmet. His face is bruised and bloodied, and she winces, hating to see him like this. She applies medi-gel to the back of his head, where Dr. Eva slammed him against the shuttle, but it’s not enough, and Liara voices her inner thoughts.

“Kaidan needs proper medical attention,” she says, her voice firm, but still gentle.

“I know,” Shepard says.

“We have to leave the Sol system,” Liara continues. “The Citadel is our best bet.”

“_I know_,” Shepard says again. She would do anything to save Kaidan, and she knows that saving Kaidan is an easier battle to win than stopping the Reapers. And that they would have had to leave the Sol system anyways, sticking around would be suicide. The Reapers far outnumber and outmatch them.

And yet… leaving Earth was one of the hardest things she ever had to do. Leaving the Sol system entirely just makes it seem so much more… final. Like they’re giving up. Like the Reapers have won.

“It will be okay,” Liara says, gripping Shepard’s hand, as if she could read her thoughts—and in all honesty, she probably could. Liara and Shepard had grown close during their time together on the Normandy SR-1, and Liara had become one of her closest friends. It wasn’t hard to guess what Shepard was thinking right now.

Shepard lets out a deep sigh. “Get us to the Citadel, Joker. As fast as you can.”

“Roger that, Commander,” Joker says.

Shepard turns back to Kaidan, then glances over at the body of Dr. Eva. “Liara, see what you and EDI can learn from that thing. Anything that could give us an edge over Cerberus will be much needed.”

“Commander, I’m receiving a signal over the QEC,” EDI says over the comms. “I believe it’s Admiral Hackett.”

“Damnit,” Shepard mutters. She knows she can’t just ignore Hackett, he needs to be updated on the war effort and what they found on Mars, but Kaidan… she fears if she leaves him, he might disappear while she’s gone.

“It’s okay, Commander, I’ll keep an eye on him,” James says. “I’ll make sure he stays stable.”

“Thanks, James,” Shepard says. It’s still not ideal, but it’s the best she’s going to get. “EDI, patch me through to the comm room.”

“Shepard, are you reading me?” Admiral Hackett’s voice comes through, staticky, but audible. “Did you get to the Archives?”

“I did,” Shepard says. “But Cerberus beat us there. They slaughtered that entire base, and we only barely got the data.”

Her voice is filled with disgust and her hands clench into fists as she remembers that room of innocent, unarmed scientists, being left to choke to death as Dr. Eva vented the room of oxygen.

She knows what that’s like, she still has nightmares about her own death, choking on stardust as she desperately tried to get oxygen into her lungs, but couldn’t. It’s a horrible fate, one she wouldn’t wish on anyone.

“I feared Cerberus might try something,” Hackett sighs. “But you did get the data?”

“Most of it,” Shepard says. “The Illusive Man downloaded some of it before we could stop him, but Liara and EDI have been analyzing what we recovered.”

As if on cue, Liara walks into the room. “Preliminary evidence supports my theory that the data is a blueprint for a Prothean device, some kind of weapon.”

She taps a command into her omni-tool and calls up a projection of the blueprint—a long cylinder with a bulbous end and several rotating parts. “This weapon would be massive in both size and scope, and capable of untold levels of destruction.”

“Interesting.” Hackett taps his chin with his finger. “Send me the data, we’ll do our own analysis as well. If you’re right, this might be the key to stopping the Reapers. Let’s hope it was worth the cost.”

“I hope so, too,” Shepard says, thinking about Kaidan lying there in the med-bay, unconscious and battered. “Major Alenko was critically injured. We’re taking him to the Citadel for proper medical attention.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Shepard,” Hackett says. “But we both know this is just the beginning. While you’re at the Citadel, talk to the Council, show them what you’ve found. With luck, they’ll give you all the support we need.”

“Right, because they’ve been so eager to help in the past,” Shepard says, before she can stop herself, forgetting for a moment who she’s talking to, and she clears her throat, “Um, Sir. And if they don’t help?”

“Do whatever it takes to get them onboard,” Hackett says. “We have proof of the Reaper invasion now. I’ll be in touch soon, Hackett out.”

“Yes, Sir,” Shepard says with a salute.

“Shepard,” Liara says after a moment, when the comm link has ended, but Shepard still hasn’t moved. “Lily. Are… are you okay?” She pauses, then frowns. “I know that’s a dumb question, but… relatively speaking. How are you holding up?”

“I don’t know,” Shepard admits. “Leaving Earth, seeing what Cerberus did on Mars, now Kaidan… it’s a lot to take in. And this weapon.”

“What about it?” Liara asks.

“Do you really think it will work?” Shepard says. You weren’t there on Earth, you didn’t see… the destruction they’re capable of is unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed, Liara. The damage Sovereign did to the Citadel and to the Fifth Fleet was catastrophic, but that is _nothing_ compared to what a whole fleet of Reapers can do.”

“Do we have any other choice?” Liara walks over and gently places a hand on Shepard’s arm. “This weapon is our best chance at stopping the Reapers. Maybe it won’t work, but it can’t hurt to try, can it?”

“I guess.” Shepard wants to believe Liara, but she can’t fully believe it, and she starts to massage her temples to try and ward off a headache.

“Just focus on the present,” Liara urges. “Major Alenko will be okay. We’re en route to the Citadel, where he’ll get the best medical care possible. And you’ll find a way of convincing the Council, I believe in you.”

“That’s the problem,” Shepard says, raising her head to look at Liara. “Everyone is counting on me, Liara. Somehow _I’ve_ become the one everyone turns to, I’ve become this… legend. I’m the Savior of the Citadel. Before that, I was the Hero of the Blitz. I’ve done impossible things, and everyone expects me to replicate them, but what if I can’t? What if this time, I fail?”

“I believe in you,” Liara repeats, gripping Shepard’s arm. “You are an amazing and capable woman, and you’re not alone. We are all in this with you, and together, we _can_ do this.”

“Thank you,” Shepard says, cracking a slight smile. Maybe it’s just the fire in her friend’s voice and her firm grip on her arm, but Shepard starts to believe her. Liara’s always been good at convincing people, and Shepard is grateful to call her a friend.

And maybe it’s their friendship that allows Shepard’s mind to stray from the unthinkably high stakes of saving the universe and all intelligent life from extinction, to a lower stakes, but still painful topic to think about.

“What if Kaidan wakes up and he still hates me?”

“I don’t think he hates you,” Liara says. “The Major is stubborn and hard-headed, but more than that, I think he’s hurting. You weren’t there, you didn’t see what he was like when you died, Lily. It broke him. I think he’s scared of losing you again.”

“I don’t know… he said some pretty hurtful things, Li,” Shepard says, frowning. “It’s dumb, there’s more important things to worry about. First we need to make sure he’ll even be okay.”

“Well, when he recovers—because I have full faith that he will—if he still insists on acting like a stubborn ass, then say the word, and I’ll flay him alive with my mind,” Liara says. “You know. Just a little.”

Shepard laughs. “Thanks, Liara. It’s good to have you back.”

There’s a lot on her plate still, but she decided to try and take Liara’s advice—one step at a time. The Citadel has some of the best medical care in the universe, and they _can_ help Kaidan. And they have the blueprint for this Prothean device now, too.

Despite everything, today was still a victory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... at least Kaidan and Shepard came close to actually having a conversation about everything that happened, right? Kinda? Yeaahhh it's going to be a litttle while before Kaidan realizes what a dunce he's being.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed and please leave a comment with your thoughts! I love the feedback.


	5. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Balancing three fanfics and two novels is a lot, but I thiiiink I've finally sorted out a slightly more stable rotation schedule, so hopefully I can get the next chapter up sooner.
> 
> As always, thanks to h34rt1lly for finding time in her busy schedule to squeeze in beta work for me, and thanks to everyone who has commented and left kudos. It really means so much to me. I hope you enjoy!

Shepard had messaged ahead to Huerta Memorial that they had someone onboard who needed immediate medical attention, so when the _Normandy_ pulls into dock at the Citadel, there is a team of medics already waiting for Kaidan.

“Get him onto the stretcher, quick!” one of the medics says, helping lift Kaidan’s legs.

“We’ve barely got a pulse here,” another medic says, frowning as she applies another dose of medi-gel to the bruises and cuts on his face.

Shepard starts to follow after them as they wheel Kaidan down the hallway on a stretcher, but Liara puts a hand on her shoulder.

“I know you’re concerned about Kaidan, but we need to present our findings to the Council,” she says gently. “Kaidan will receive the best care possible at Huerta Memorial, but there’s nothing we can do to help him now. We _can_ still help everyone else by convincing the Council to join the war.”

Shepard sighs, knowing her friend is right, but not wanting to leave Kaidan. She knows there’s nothing that can be done now—if she went to Huerta Memorial with him, she’d likely just end up sitting in a waiting room somewhere while they treated him, and that wouldn’t be of any help to anyone.

“Alright,” she says after a moment. “Let’s do this.”

Truth be told, it’s not just that she doesn’t want to leave Kaidan, it’s also that she doesn’t want to address the Council. How many times has she warned them of the Reaper threat? How many times has she begged for their help, begged them to believe her? And how many times have they brushed her off and dismissed her claims?

She’s scared that even though the Reapers have invaded Earth, it won’t be any different now. But it _has _to be, right? There’s no way the Council can ignore the evidence when it’s right before their eyes. She just hopes it won’t be too late—Alliance high command only came around moments before the Reapers destroyed their headquarters.

Taking a deep breath to steel her nerves, she marches off towards the direction of the Citadel Tower—and right into Captain Bailey.

“Captain Bailey,” she says. “Good to see you looking well. Are you here on behalf of the Council?”

“Good to see you as well, Shepard,” Bailey says. “Though it’s ‘Commander’ now. I heard about Earth. Damn tragedy, but I’m glad you got out okay.” He sighs and they both share a brief moment of silence for all that has been lost already, and all that will be lost before this is over.

“The Council is expecting you,” he says, leading Shepard, Liara and James through the nearby lounge. “But they’re dealing with their own… problems. With the war and everything.”

Shepard lets out a small sigh of relief. At least they finally acknowledged that the galaxy is at war. It’s a small first step, but an important one.

“Anyways,” Bailey continues. “I’m here to let you know that they apologize for the inconvenience, but someone will meet you in Udina’s office in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks, Bailey,” Shepard says. With all the chaos of everything that happened on Earth, and then on Mars, and then the stress about the Council, she’d completely forgotten that Anderson had retired a few months ago to go back to the Alliance. She’d never liked Udina much, nor had she forgotten that he too hadn’t believed her claims about Reapers and had tried to undermine and sabotage her mission to Ilos.

But he’s the human Councilor now, so all she can do is hope that the time he spent as Anderson’s top advisor, as well as the irrefutable proof of the active Reaper invasion, have helped shape him into a better man.

“I don’t mean to pry…” Bailey starts to say, and Shepard turns back to him, pushing away thoughts of Udina and the Council and how she’s supposed to pull this off.

“I saw the medics from Huerta Memorial when you landed. Everything okay?”

_The cold neutrality in the doctor’s robotic face as she waits for a command from the Illusive Man. Some unheard word over the comms an order for death, and then she’s slamming Kaidan against the shuttle with supernatural strength, and there’s nothing Shepard can do about it._

_Kaidan, lying bloody and bruised and barely breathing, her heart in her throat; the overwhelming fear that medi-gel won’t be enough, that they won’t be able to save him, that _she_ won’t be able to save him, that she’ll lose him. Again. Before she ever really got him back_.

Shepard licks her suddenly dry lips. “Yeah, we ran into… an incident, on Mars. One of my crew was badly injured. But I know he’s in good hands now, Huerta Memorial provides top of the line care.”

Her voice sounds forced and insincere, even to her own ears, but if Bailey picks up on it, he doesn’t say anything.  
“Shit, I’m sorry,” is all he says. “This war has taken so much already, and it’s only just begun. I—”

Whatever he was about to say is cut off by a beep from his comms unit and he scowls, answering it. “Yeah? … I see. Okay. I’ll be there in five.”

“Sorry, Shepard,” he says as he hangs up. “Duty calls. But I still have time to escort you to Udina’s office.”

“It’s okay,” she says. “I know the way. You can go on ahead, I’ll catch up in a moment.”

“Are you sure?” Liara asks, and Shepard nods. “Alright.”

She walks a few feet with Bailey, then pauses to turn back to Shepard. “Kaidan will be okay, Shepard. After we brief the Council, there will be time to stop by Huerta Memorial. Try not to worry too much. As we speak, he’s being provided with the best possible care.”

“Me? Worry?” Shepard cracks a smile. “Pff. I would never.”

Liara’s face softens into a genuine smile. “Of course. I’ll meet you in Udina’s office.”

“You coming?” Bailey asks James, who had been silently standing there for the whole exchange, but he shakes his head.

“Briefing the Council is above my pay-grade. I’m just here to be a tourist today, I’ll do my best to stay out of trouble.”

With James departing in one direction and Liara and Bailey in another, that leaves Shepard alone in the Citadel lounge. There isn’t much time before she has to brief the Council and plead for their help, but she needs time to get her thoughts in order. She can’t think about Kaidan, both his condition and the condition of their relationship threaten to overwhelm her if she thinks too much about them.

She has to focus on being Commander Shepard. The Commander Shepard who saved Elysium, the Commander Shepard who defeated Saren and Sovereign, the Commander Shepard who destroyed the human Reaper and stopped the Collectors. She can’t just be Lily right now.

Truth be told, she sometimes wonders if she’ll ever be able to just be Lily again. Because the galaxy needs Commander Shepard, not Lily Shepard. Maybe it’s a good thing Kaidan hates her, maybe it’s better to stay unattached. Neutral. Committed only to the cause.

A news report about the batarian Hegemony catches her attention at the edge of her hearing range and she turns towards the screen, where a solemn-looking man is rattling off the news.

“Reports are saying that the entire batarian Hegemony has been destroyed by a mysterious threat,” the man is saying. “We are not yet able to confirm if there are survivors, as the Hegemony has gone completely dark. Early reports from Earth are saying that it is also under attack, from the same unknown threat that destroyed the Hegemony.”

She tunes out the news after that, unwilling and unable to hear more about how bad the situation across the galaxy is—she knows how big the threat is. She knows what’s at stake. _This_ is what she’s fighting for, she reminds herself. She won’t let Earth fall to the Reapers. She won’t let the Alliance be destroyed the way the Hegemony was.

Delaying the inevitable will only make things worse. Cold dread is gnawing at her stomach at the thought of facing the Council only to be dismissed and turned away _again_, but she has to try. Maybe this time they’ll listen. Maybe this time they’ll lend the help that humanity so desperately needs.

But no matter what, she has to try. She has to fight. And odds be damned, she _will_ find a way of stopping the Reapers, whether the Council helps or not.

* * *

After meeting an assistant to the Council in Udina’s office, Shepard is whisked off to the Council chambers, where they’re already in session. And by the look on Liara’s face, it hasn’t been going well.

“Earth was the first Council world hit,” Udina is saying. “By all reports, it bears the brunt of the attack. We need support!”

“Earth isn’t in this alone,” Councilor Sparatus says. “We all have our own problems to face.”

A knot tightens in Shepard’s stomach—so this is how it’s going to be. But she’s not giving up without a fight, so she squares her shoulders, marches up beside her friend, and stares the Council right in the face.

“The reports are all true,” she says. “Earth is under attack, by the Reapers, and our time is running out. And this is just the beginning. We need all the help we can get.”

The three alien councilors exchange a look, but ultimately Councilor Tevos is the one to answer Shepard.

“We all face a similar problem,” she says. “The Reapers are pressing on our borders, too, we can’t abandon the defense efforts to help Earth. Our own worlds will fall if we divert our resources.”

“Which is exactly why we need to work together,” Shepard says, hoping, praying, that the fire in her eyes and fury in her voice is enough. That this time, they’ll believe her. “None of us stand a chance against the Reapers on our own.”

“So you suggest we all combine our resources to save Earth?” Councilor Valern asks. “How is that fair?”

“No.” Shepard shakes her head. “I have a plan, a plan that I believe can destroy the Reapers, but we need everyone’s help on this.” She gestures to Liara, who calls up the blueprint on her omni-tool.

“This is a Prothean blueprint that we found in the Mars Archives,” she says. “This was created during their war with the Reapers, and the information on how to build it has been recorded meticulously.”

“What is it a blueprint for?” Councilor Sparatus asks.

“We’re… not entirely sure,” Liara admits. “But we believe it to be some type of weapon, powerful enough that it is capable of destroying the Reapers.”

Councilor Valern frowns, leaning forward to look at the blueprint. “The scale of it… the amount of resources required would be immense. It would be a colossal undertaking.”

“Which is why we need your help,” Shepard says. “I’ve already forwarded the plans to Admiral Hackett and the remnants of the Alliance’s fleet have begun gathering resources. It is eminently doable to construct, especially if everyone contributes.”

“The Reapers destroyed the Protheans.” Councilor Tevos shakes her head in dismissal. “Have you considered that? How powerful could this weapon be if it couldn’t save them?”

“The information in the blueprint suggests that it was incomplete when the Protheans built it,” Liara says. “There was a final component, referred to as the Catalyst, that they couldn’t finish in time. But if we can finish what they started, we can stop the Reapers.”

“But we need your help,” Shepard says. “While the Alliance has started gathering the resources for construction, it’s too big to do on our own. We need to stand together as a united front.”

Once again, the three alien councilors share a look, and a subtle shake of Councilor Valern’s head is the only warning Shepard gets that the Council is going to refuse to help. Again.

“Look, Commander,” Councilor Tevos starts to say. “The cruel and unfortunate truth is that while the Reapers are focused on Earth, we can better prepare our own defenses. Perhaps not all will be lost. If we can secure our own borders, perhaps we can once again consider aiding you. I’m sorry, but that’s the best we can do.”

Something inside Shepard snaps, and she forgets that they’re the Council and she’s just a disgraced spectre and lowly commander—forgets, or maybe she just doesn’t care about diplomacy and tact anymore.

“Do you really think that will be enough?” she asks. “The Reapers aren’t going to stop at Earth, they won’t stop until they destroy and conquer every single organic species in the galaxy. Your abandonment of Earth might buy you a few more months’ time, but it won’t save you. In the end, it won’t matter. The Reapers are not an enemy who can be defeated in a war of attrition, they don’t require resources and time means nothing to an ancient race of sentient machines. Our only hope is this blueprint, and you won’t even consider it?”

She starts pacing, but before the Council can say anything to reprimand her, she continues. “How dare you abandon Earth? How dare you act like this is an unfortunate event that no one could have expected? Three years ago, I warned you about the Reapers when I saw the Prothean beacon on Eden Prime. When I saw Sovereign on Virmire, I warned you again. When I learned about the conduit, when I went to Ilos, when I spoke with Vigil, I warned you. When Sovereign, Saren and the geth attacked the Citadel, I thought _finally_, at least they will listen now.”

She stops her pacing and looks them all directly in the eyes, one by one. “But still you dismissed me and ignored me and insinuated that I was delusional. When the Collectors started taking human colonies, I warned you again, and when I discovered the human Reaper they’d been building, once more I warned you. When I discovered irrefutable proof that the Reaper invasion was only moments away, when I destroyed the Alpha Relay, _I warned you_. At every single step of this journey for the past three years, I have warned you.”

She sucks in a deep breath. “And at every single step, you have brushed me off, refusing to even consider the possibility that I was right. Ashley Williams sacrificed herself on Virmire to stop this. _I_ died to stop this. Thousands have died on Earth, and thousands more are dying as we speak. How many more must die before you realize that I am not an inconvenient thorn in your side, but the one person who has been trying to save the entire galaxy for the past three years? How can you look me in the eye and deny me help after every single fucking thing I’ve warned you about has come true?”

Her chest is heaving, angry tears are threatening to spill over and Udina has his head buried in her hands while the Council looks on in shock, but she doesn’t care. If the world is ending, may as well go out with a bang.

“Commander…” Councilor Tevos starts to say, but then trails off, and Shepard shakes her head.

“You know what? Go to hell. That’s where you’ve doomed us all. If you decide to grow a conscience and actually help us _all_ survive, you know how to reach me.”

With that, she storms out of the room, not bothering to look back at whatever repercussions there might be from her outburst. Let the Council reprimand her all they want. What can they possibly do now, when the Reapers are on their doorstep and the world is ending?

* * *

Shepard’s waiting in a lounge on the Citadel when Liara comes out a few moments later.

“Well, that was certainly a memorable briefing,” she says, one corner of her mouth twitching slightly and Shepard can’t help but laugh.

“I know I shouldn’t have lost my temper, but… I can’t believe they’d still deny me help, after all that’s happened.”

“I know,” Liara says, sitting down next to her. “But we can still do this, Shepard. _You_ can do this.”

“Me?” Shepard shakes her head. “I’m just one woman, Liara. I don’t have the pull or resources that the Council does.”

“You’re more than one woman and you know that,” Liara says, placing a hand over Shepard’s clenched fist. “You’re a legend. You’ve saved the galaxy before, and you can do it again. There are people—myself included—who will follow you to the ends of the world because we believe in you, even if the Council doesn’t.”

“A legend.” Shepard’s lips twist into a wry smile. “That’s what he called me once, on Horizon. A legend. And a ghost. Sometimes I think that second one is the more accurate description.”

“You should go see him,” Liara says gently. “Huerta Memorial has excellent care, I’m sure he’s fine.”

“Yeah,” Shepard says quietly. She _does_ want to go visit Kaidan, but she’s also scared. Not necessarily scared that he’s dead, though there is still that slight fear that he won’t be okay. But as his commanding officer, they would have sent her a comm if he died or was in a precarious position, and she hasn’t gotten anything, so she has to assume no news is good news. No, the main reason she's scared is because she fears that he’ll be back on his feet in no time and nothing will change.

She's scared that he’ll still hate her. Scared that she’ll never be enough, that there’s too much damage done to their relationship, that the chasm between them can never be bridged.

But she’s Commander Shepard, hero of the Blitz, savior of the Citadel, and there’s a galaxy to save. Kaidan is just another soldier, she tells herself. No matter what, it will be okay. _She’ll_ be okay. She has to be, for everyone’s sake, especially now that the Council has refused to help her.

A message pops up on her comm terminal, and her heart skips a beat, but it’s just Udina.

_Meet me in my office, Shepard_.

He no doubt wants to reprimand her for her outburst in front of the Council, and she sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose, already feeling a headache coming on.

“Everything okay?” Liara asks and Shepard nods.

“Just Udina. He probably wants to yell at me about diplomacy and tact and decorum and respecting the chain of command, blah blah blah.” She opens up the message, pausing for a moment before she types. She needs to go see Kaidan, see with her own eyes that he’s okay. Udina can wait.

_I have an errand to run first. I’ll be there in half an hour_.

Liara frowns. “While your outburst to the Council was rather… unprecedented, surely even Udina can’t hold it against you too much. I can’t believe they’re refusing to help. Are you going to go see him?”

“Later,” Shepard says. “I need to see Kaidan first.”

“Of course. Do you want company, or would you rather go alone?”

Shepard considers for a moment. Liara is one of her closest friends and there’s no one Shepard trusts more and yet… she’s not sure she wants anyone by her side right now.

“I think alone,” she says. “I need some time to gather all my thoughts. I don’t suppose I can convince you to talk to Udina for me?”

Liara just smiles. “It will be fine, Shepard. You’ve dealt with Reapers, I’m sure you can handle Udina.”

“Okay, but if he’s too much of an asshole can you maybe threaten to flay him alive with your mind? Pretty please?”

Liara laughs. “I’ll meet you back here after you’ve gone to see Kaidan, and we can deal with Udina together.”

“Fine. Be back in half an hour, tops.”

* * *

Huerta Memorial is clean, calm, and quiet. That’s the first thing Shepard notices upon stepping through the doors. There’s a handful of doctors milling about, chatting quietly, and a news report plays in the background. The lobby has rows of seating, a kiosk for gifts, and lots of plants for fresh oxygen. In the peace of the lobby, it’s easy to forget that there’s a war going on.

Now that she’s there, Shepard realizes she doesn’t even know who the doctor in charge of Kaidan’s care is, or where he’s located, or anything. She didn’t comm ahead, she just… showed up.

She wanders over to the front desk to ask when she hears a familiar voice coming from the other side of the room, just barely audible.

There’s two doctors standing together, one with graying hair and her back turned, and the other, who faces Shepard, speaks with a notable French accent. Dr. Chakwas and Dr. Michel.

“Shepard!” Dr. Chakwas calls when she sees Shepard and waves her over.

“What are you doing here, Dr. Chakwas?” Shepard asks.

“I’ve been working at an R&D lab down in the Wards, working closely with Admiral Hackett,” she says. “But I heard that you’d escaped Earth in the _Normandy_ and that someone was critically injured, so I rushed over.”

Shepard swallows around the lump in her throat that always crops up when she thinks about Kaidan, and the sight of the Cerberus operative bashing his head against the shuttle. “Yeah. We had a run-in with a Cerberus synthetic on Mars and… Kaidan got the worst of it. How’s he doing?”

“Dr. Michel has been his primary physician,” Dr. Chakwas says. “I’ve just been helping out, since I’ve worked with Major Alenko before. L2 biotics can make things tricky, but I’ve been impressed with his resilience. He’s been recovering quite well, all things considered, so you can breathe.”

Shepard smiles, slightly chagrined that she was that easy to read, but Dr. Chakwas served on both _Normandy_ missions. Shepard and Kaidan tried to keep their relationship discreet, but most people on the ship knew that the two of them had feelings for each other. And when Shepard and Dr. Chakwas had indulged in a bottle of serrice ice brandy on the SR-2, a slightly tipsy Shepard had let it slip just how much she missed Kaidan, and how much his words to her on Horizon had hurt.

With the assurance that Kaidan is alive and recovering, Shepard lets out the tension in her shoulders and takes a deep breath. “That’s a relief to hear, thank you.”

“I’m just sorry I couldn’t have been there on the _Normandy_ earlier,” Dr. Chakwas says. “But the medi-gel that was applied before he got here did a great deal to help.”

“You know,” Shepard says. “We could use a medic on the _Normandy_. We had to leave Earth in a rush, we don’t have a full complement. And it wouldn’t be the _Normandy_ without you.”

“I would be delighted to serve onboard the _Normandy_ again,” Dr. Chakwas says. “You say the word, and I’ll be there.”

“Docking bay D24,” Shepard says. “We have the essentials onboard, but grab any supplies you need and I’ll meet you there.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Dr. Chakwas says. “Go check on Major Alenko. Dr. Michel can fill you in on the details, but he’s doing well, Shepard. I’ll see you onboard the _Normandy_.”

Shepard nods and takes a deep breath to steel her nerves. Kaidan is alive and recovering. That’s all that matters. But she needs to know exactly what the prognosis is, she needs to know if there will be any long-term damage.

Dr. Michel had distanced herself to give Shepard and Dr. Chakwas room to talk, but Shepard sees her standing by the door, reading over a datapad, and walks over.

“Commander Shepard,” Dr. Michel says, looking up as Shepard approaches. “It’s good to see you’re doing well. We were all devastated to hear about Earth, but relieved that you managed to escape. I assume you’re here about Major Alenko?”

Shepard nods. “Dr. Chakwas said he’s recovering well, but that you could fill me in on the details.”

“He is a very resilient young man,” Dr. Michel says, offering Shepard a reassuring smile. “The head trauma was severe, but we managed to reduce the swelling quickly.”

She pauses, and dread settles into Shepard’s stomach. There’s something the doctor isn’t telling her. “But? It sounds like you’re holding something back.”

Dr. Michel shakes her head. “I don’t mean to worry you. He is stable and recovering well, but these types of injuries can go either way. He hasn’t regained consciousness yet, and it’s too hard to tell what potential long-term damage there might be until then. Especially since he is an L2 biotic. There was extensive damage to his implant.”

“What does that mean?” Shepard asks, her voice cracking slightly. “Will he be okay?”

“We can’t know for sure,” Dr. Michel says. “Not until he wakes up. He will likely be fine, but we don’t know what, if any, long-term damage there is. But his vitals are strong, and I am optimistic. You can go see him if you’d like, he’s just down the hall. First door on the right.”

Shepard chews on her lower lip and nods. “Thank you. I think I’ll go do that.”

“Have hope, Commander,” Dr. Michel says. “There is good reason to believe he will pull through this without any long-term effects.”

Shepard thanks the doctor again and says her farewells, then makes her way down the hallway, walking slowly as she processes all the information. Maybe it’s good that Kaidan isn’t awake yet—she’s not sure she can remain professional and neutral when she sees him, and it would be far too embarrassing for him to actually see her break down. Especially when he still hates her.

She pauses for a moment outside his door, trying to gather all her thoughts. Trying to prepare herself. “Here goes nothing,” she mutters and presses the button to open the door.

Kaidan is lying shirtless on a hospital bed—oh god, he’s shirtless, that should not be the first thing she notices about him, that’s not something she can think about anymore, she needs to focus—his face and chest mottled with bruises. Despite the injuries, he looks almost… peaceful. It makes her realize that every time she’s seen him lately, he’s been on edge, because of _her_, and that breaks her heart.

“Hey Kadain,” she says, her voice cracking as tears immediately start welling up in her eyes. This was why she needed to do this alone, this was why she couldn’t have Liara with her. Even with Liara, she’s afraid of being vulnerable. There’s only one person who she ever trusted herself to be vulnerable with, and he’s lying unconscious on a hospital bed.

“I know I’m probably the last person you want to see right now,” she continues. “I don’t even know if you can hear me, but since you can’t tell me to get the hell out, either, I’m going to take my chances. You have to fight, okay? There’s a long fight ahead of us, and we need you in it. Seeing you in action again… it reminded me that you’re a hell of a soldier. You always have been, and you’ve only gotten more capable and confident since I last saw you.”

She pauses to wipe away the tears. “_I _need you, Kaidan. And I know you hate me right now. Maybe you always will, maybe what I’ve done is unforgivable, but I would rather you hate me and live than die loving me. So please. _Live_. Give us a chance. Give _me_ a chance again. And even if you can’t do it for me, there’s a galaxy to save. Do it for Earth. Do it for the future of all organic species, but whatever you do, just live.”

A doctor walks in to check on his vitals, and Shepard hastily wipes away her remaining tears, ashamed at having been caught crying and pouring her heart out to her unconscious ex-lover, but the doctor looks unfazed. Maybe he deals with emotional confessions to unconscious people all the time.

“Let me know if there’s anything you need,” she says to the doctor, giving him the necessary information to contact her onboard the _Normandy_. “Anything at all.”

Her heart aches at the thought of just leaving Kaidan there, but there’s Udina to deal with and a galaxy to save, and she knows Kaidain’s in the best possible hands at Huerta Memorial. There’s nothing she can do if she stays, so she walks to the door, but she pauses in the doorframe to look back at Kaidan, lying there on the bed. “_Fight_, Kaidan. Stay alive. And that’s an order, soldier.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed, and I always welcome feedback! Hearing from my readers always puts a smile on my face.

**Author's Note:**

> The majority of the story will take place in ME3, and next chapter will pick up right before the mission to Mars, but I felt this prologue was necessary in order to establish where Kaidan and Lily are at, currently. I hope you enjoyed and please let me know your thoughts!


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